Applications of TRIZ and Axiomatic Design: A Comparison to Deduce Best Practices in Industry

In the first decade of 2000s, several contributions have illustrated methods combining TRIZ and Axiomatic Design (AD). The strength of the connection was found in the complementary objectives AD and TRIZ pursue. AD is supposed to analyze the problem and structure it in the most convenient way, while TRIZ should solve the minimum number of design conflicts that are intrinsically present in a case study.Nevertheless, despite the promising match between AD and TRIZ, no conjoint application strategy has emerged as a reference, neither in academia, nor in industry. Conversely, the quantity has dropped of scientific papers contextually making reference to both methodologies.Some studies attempt to remark the methodological problems concerning the combination of AD and TRIZ. In a different perspective, the authors performed an application-oriented study, in order to point out the industrial domains for which the methodologies result the most suitable. The survey highlights that TRIZ is mostly employed for mass-market products, while AD is basically used to develop systems that industrial organizations make use of. The authors discuss the consequences of these findings, inferring how design can benefit from TRIZ and AD heuristics and the practical cases in which they are likely to be combined successfully.