FIT: A TRIZ Based Failure Identification Tool for Product-Service Systems

Manufacturing companies are increasingly becoming aware that the sale of a product does not end when the good is delivered to the customer. On the contrary, the product must be followed by the company throughout its life cycle; from its conception to its disposal. An increasingly common practice is to support the entire chain of sales and after sales, from dealers to end customers, with a range of services that give the product added value. For example in the field of crane manufacturers for trucks, Fassi Gru S.p.a. provides, in addition to its product training for the use and maintenance of cranes, tools for the simulation of the lifting capacity of the crane (Fassi Installation Program), monitoring of usage statistics and the state of wear of the crane (Fassi SmartApp, Internet of CraneTM), control of residual life, and the status and timing of maintenance (Maintenance Assistant). The work presented here is a new after sale service designed to identify quickly and easily the element that caused the failure of the crane through a series of guided questions about the behavior of the crane subject to malfunctions. This tool is called FIT (Fault Investigator Tool) and allows the network service Fassi rapid and accurate diagnosis of the cause of failure in case of malfunctions of the crane; reducing the time to diagnosis and avoiding unnecessary and costly replacement components by trial and error. The novelty of this work lies in the method used to achieve it; FIT was in fact created by the special knowledge gained from R&D engineers of Fassi about new methods of systematic innovation developed by the University of Bergamo. In this article some of these techniques are shown: in particular those dealing with the correct formulation of the problem, the functional analysis and the Anticipatory Failure Determination; a particular instrument that combines FMEA (Failure modes and effects analysis) and TRIZ (Theory of inventive problem solving). The article will also present the needs that led to the development of the tool and show the operation of the instrument through a case study; showing all the advantages provided by its application.