A Proposal of a Systematic and Consistent Substance-field Analysis

This paper presents a simplification of one of the TRIZ methods, the Substance-Field Analysis (SFA). Applying TRIZ methods is often time consuming and therefore a barrier to its application in the industry. Our research group strives to simplify TRIZ methods to make their use more widespread. This SFA simplification was obtained during the implementation of a computer aided SFA. This implementation implies an ontological phase, which leads to the translation of the SFA terminological and conditional knowledge in a computer language. In addition to their operational interest, the chosen computer languages (Description Logics and First Order Logic) have formal interest for the SFA. The complexity of the application of SFA has regularly been reported by the TRIZ community. The SFA terminology suffers from a lack of normalization and the 76 Standards deployment is an empirical process. We propose a clarification of the Substance-Field Modeling terminology and a systematic process for deploying the 76 Standards. Thanks to Description Logics, the SFA terminology is formalized in an automatically consistency checked model and First Order Logic ensures the systematization of the 76 Standards deployment.