Morphological Analysis in Inventive Engineering

The paper describes Morphological Analysis (MA) in the context of Inventive Engineering. First, a short history of MA in the area of engineering design is presented, both in the USA and Europe. Next, its seven key assumptions are introduced and explained, and a four-stage procedure for using it to generate design concepts is presented, with its various steps discussed. In addition to the generation of design concepts, five other potential applications of the approach are proposed. These include classification, comparison of design concepts, finding patent holes and building patent fences, design knowledge acquisition, and learning abstract concepts. Finally, both advantages and disadvantages of MA are discussed.