Engineer at Large: The Essential Guide to Structured Problem Solving and Creative Innovation

As an “ENGINEER AT LARGE” it was the author's role to solve engineering problems when process engineers were “stumped” or showed no signs of making progress. Sometimes teams of engineers had been working on a problem for months, or a solution was needed urgently in order to keep production going. In every case, the problem was always solved quickly and without fuss, by systematically applying the structured problem solving steps described in this book. The key to success was, and is, to have the discipline to perform and complete every step sequentially. The methodology described incorporates well known standard structured problem solving steps with some key additions. A critical addition is the introduction of TRIZ (the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) to the engineer’s problem solving arsenal. This book serves not only as a description of how to successfully and repeatedly solve engineering problems and innovate, but also as an introduction to TRIZ