COMPARISON OF THREE DIFFERENT TRIZ TOOLS FOR A BUSINESS PROBLEM ANALYSIS CONSIDERING THE EXAMPLE OF THE MENTORING PROBLEM IN A SALES DEPARTMENT
Abstract
Managers are used to solving sales management problems by using their own experience. In the extreme cases, if the decision is ambiguous, there is always an opportunity to discuss with colleagues or invite consultants. As a result, most of the problems in the field of management are solved. But not all problems are solved easily. What to do in such cases? If one must solve a difficult managerial problem, one should use the system analysis methods. In this article, the author will show how it is possible to «decompose to details» almost any problem with the use of TRIZ. In addition, the author compares different methods used in TRIZ for solving organizational and managerial problems on the basis of analyzing the same problem and providing solutions that emerged in each case. Keynotes: TRIZ, Root Conflict Analysis, Functional Analysis, Schematization, Contradictions.
1 A Problem
Let us consider a case. In the sales department of a company engaged in the sale of rolled steel (B2B market), the process of skill transfer from more experienced employees to newcomers suffered. Therefore, the head of the sales department decided to intensify the mentoring process.
However, the problem appeared: if inexperienced employees conduct mentoring, then the newcomers learn slowly and reach the planned indicators within long time, because they make a large number of mistakes, which have to be corrected by the manager.
On the other hand, if mentoring is conducted by experienced employees, the process runs significantly faster and provides a higher quality, but experienced employees spend their valuable time with the newcomers rather than spending it with clients they are responsible for working with (the most experienced employees are in charge of key accounts, e.g. clients of category “A”). Their resource is much wasted… What to do?
We have a contradictory problem: mentoring should be conducted by the experienced employees in order to bring the newcomers to the result required (achievement of the sales plan) relatively quickly, and mentoring should be done by less experienced employees to avoid distracting the experienced ones from their primary functions — working with the most important clients.
Thus, we can draw up a model of technical contradiction:
Mentoring should be conducted by the experienced employees in order to quickly bring the newcomers to the result, but at the same time the experienced employees reduce the time of interaction with key accounts, which is not acceptable.
As seen this contradiction, one attribute refers to the new employees (students), the other corresponds to the experienced employees (if they are involved as mentors), but both are important properties of the system under study from the point of view of the KPI implementation by the sales department. It is important to note that it is the sales department of the trading company.
It is crucial that the contradiction shown above can be identified as “an upper level contradiction”, which means that this contradiction is defined on the basis of the initial conditions of the problem and requires further detailed analysis. If we try to resolve this contradiction by using standard TRIZ tools [1], for example, with well-known 40 Inventive Principles, then we will certainly come up with some solutions, but there is a high probability that such solutions will be rather weak.
Therefore, let us try to perform analysis of the problem in three different ways: with RCA+, Function Analysis, and Schematization.
2 Application of Root Conflict Analysis (RCA+)
If we decide to analyze the problem deeper by using RCA+ [2], first we would need to formulate the target negative effect, for which we determine the working technical contradiction from the pair of the technical contradiction model shown above.
Correspondingly, we have two contradictions to choose from:
- Mentoring should be conducted by the experienced employees in order to quickly bring the newcomers to the result, but at the same time the experienced employees reduce the time of interaction with key accounts, which is not acceptable.
- Mentoring should be conducted by less experienced employees (usual employees), because they are not in charge of working with key accounts, but at the same time the quality of training of the newcomers is lower than by the experienced employee and the newcomers mentored take a long time to achieve their results, which is not acceptable.
Which contradiction we must choose?
From the point of view of business goals, it is more important for us that new employees quickly reach planned targets and work reliably in the interests of business; therefore, we accept the working contradiction 1:
Mentoring should be conducted by the experienced employees in order to quickly bring the newcomers to the result, but at the same time the experienced employees reduce the time of interaction with key accounts, which is not acceptable.
Now we determine the problem which we have to analyze in depth, but we set up the conclusion of mentoring should be conducted by the experienced employees. Such a problem would be:
The mentoring process absorbs time of the experienced employees (which they could spend on working with key accounts otherwise).
After we have selected the target problem, we build a cause-effect chain (Fig. 1).
Fig. 1. Application of RCA+
In principle, we do not have to go on the deeper analysis of the chain resulted. A solution becomes obvious: you need to disassemble the mentoring program into components for each of the listed blocks:
- Internal business processes and rules.
- B2B sales techniques.
- Understanding customer business structure in every sale channel [3].
- Building efficient communication with customer decision centers.
Next, we will need to determine which blocks of the mentoring processes can be converted to the online format so that the participants can study them on their own; which ones have to be supported by less experienced employees (for example, some nuances of filling in the fields of CRM system, reports in the CRM system, warehouse inventory database, general approaches to communication with clients, work with a matrix of commercial advantages, etc.), and which ones have to be supported by the most experienced mentors, for example, developing a transaction strategy, the nuances of effective communication with decision centers of company’s clients.
Now let us try to identify additional tasks (added to the list below) with respect to the obtained сause-effect chain by using the operator of negation (using the negation operator provides to pose problems on the causal chain implies that we do not accept the consequence, while accepting its cause, thus forming a paradox):
- How to make it possible that inexperienced employees COULD implement the mentoring program in a quality manner, even if they have not accumulated sufficient list of mistakes and good practices necessary for the successful implementation of the mentoring program?
Solution: typical errors can be identified and described in advance, including in the form of interactive simulators or tests in the LMS-system, which will reduce time spent by experienced employees on working on typical errors.
2. How to make it possible that experienced employees IMPLEMENT the whole mentoring program, even if the mentoring program does not include essential subjects of theory and practice?
Solution: it is also about the transition to digital learning with interactive simulators. Moreover, we have to foresee some sessions with experienced employees too.
3. How to make it possible that the mentoring program does NOT include an essential block of theory and practice, but new employees will successfully study all 4 blocks of the program?
Solution: part of the blocks of mentoring program must come from outside. For example, to change the conditions for the reception of employees and to give priority to the hunting of employees from competitors with similar processes (this solution has significant limitations, although it is quite useful).
Conclusion: RCA+ is a useful and effective tool for primary processing of a business problem, which can be successfully used to solve organizational and managerial tasks. It is confirmed by our experience with using this tool. In addition, RCA+ can show clearly hidden contradictions in investigated business system.
Through the use of the negation operator, the list of solutions according to the results of applying RCA+ can be identified. An operator of negation could help to draw up some useful additional problems to work out (types of paradox).
Unfortunately, this TRIZ tool has a significant drawback because it does not have internal means for working with the structure of a system. Therefore, when conducting RCA+, it is easy to miss elements of the system and supersystem that are essential from the point of view of a problem. It is why in TRIZ, RCA+ is often used after the application of other tools, e.g. Function Analysis in order to clarify causes of a particular function.
RCA+ can be used as a standalone tool, but there is a risk of missing a significant element of a system, it is why there is a risk of narrowing the potential solutions space.
3 Application of Function Analysis
The problem is drawn from the main contradiction drown up above: the mentoring process absorbs time of the experienced employees (which they could spend on working with key accounts instead).
An example of the detailed functional analysis using organizational and management tasks is described in the author’s book “TRIZ. Solving Business Problems» [4]. In this article, the solutions are presented without explanation of how exactly they were generated.
Note: If to apply Extended Function Analysis for business systems to this problem in the version proposed by V. Souchkov [6] instead “classical” TRIZ-based Function Analysis” [7], the results could be much better than in the case of applying the «classical» Function Analysis.
Component Analysis:
Table 1. Component Analysis (previously).
| Investigated system | Subsystems | Supersystems |
| Mentoring system | 1. Mentor 2. Mentoring program | 1. New fellow workers 2. Market environment: a. Clients. b. Rivals. |
Function modeling and ranking of functions (with final definition of system elements):
Where:
- Green rectangle: an element carrying a main mentoring function.
- Pink rectangle: elements of supersystems from table 1.
- Grey rectangle: elements of supersystems from table 1.
- Blue rectangle: elements which are created due to analysis during drawing up the functional model, fig.2
Function model in the matrix form:
Table 2. Functional model in the matrix
1. Mentoring program
| № | Function description | Type/rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F1.1 | Sets requirements to the experienced employee | AF2* | N* |
2. Mentor (experienced employee)
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F2.1 | Makes evidence of his experience | AF1 | E | Many not useful details |
| F2.2 | Explains the content to new employee according to the mentoring program | AF2 | E | This activity does not require high mentor’s qualifications |
| F2.3 | Creates purpose of the meeting | AF1 | E | This activity does not require high mentor’s qualifications |
| F2.4 | Set limits and requirements according mentoring goals | AF1 | N | |
| F2.5 | Makes updates to the mentoring program | AdF | I | Mentor often forgets it |
3. New employee
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F3.1 | Creates value proposition through mentoring process | AF 1 | I | Lack of experience → new employee has a mentoring process |
| F3.2 | Prepares a meeting report due to special formes | AF 2 | I | Himself / herself. Lack of experience → new employee has a mentoring process |
| F3.3 | Corrects the transfer of experience by an experienced employee | AF 3 | N | New employee corrects the work of a mentor according to his activities |
| F3.4 | Spends mentor’s time | HF | It’s our goal |
4. Client
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F4.1 | Sets limits to an experienced employee | AF1 | N | Client sets the scope within which mentor’s actions are possible |
| F4.2 | Sets limits to a new employee | AF1 | N | Client sets the scope within which new employee’s actions are possible |
5. Rival
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F5.1 | Creates value own value proposition | HFр | A rival is trying to provide its proposition | |
| F5.2 | Sets limits to the client | AF1 | N | A rival creates additional restrictions in which the client acts |
6. Mentor’s experience
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F6.1 | Shares with a new employee | MF | N |
7. Value proposition 1
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F7.1 | Transfers to client | AF1 | N | It’s enough to mentoring process |
8. After meeting report
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F8.1 | Informs mentor about particularities of meeting with a client | AF2 | N | It’s enough to mentoring process |
9. Purpose of meetings by mentor
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F9.1 | Limits client’s responses | AF2 | N |
10.Limits and requirements 1
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F10.1 | Sets requirements to the new employee within the meeting time | AF2 | N |
11. Limits and requirements 2
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F11.1 | Sets rival’s requirements to the client within the meeting time | AF2 | N | We can only respond to them |
12. Limits and requirements 3
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F12.1 | Sets program’s requirements to the mentor | AF1 | N |
13. Value proposition 2
| № | Function description | Type / rank | Function performance | Notes |
| F13.1 | Transferring of rival’s value proposition to the client | HF |
Follow the link to see more convinient view of the table.
Where:
- MF – main function.
- AF – auxiliary function with rank 1…n.
- AdF – additional function.
- HF – harmful function.
- I – insufficient function implementation.
- E – excess of function implementation.
- N – normal (sufficient) function implementation.
The system of tasks which resulted from the assessment of the function model:
- How to make it possible that the mentor does not broadcast the content of the program to the new employee?
Solution: E-learning; a new employee plans a lesson with a mentor, guided by a well-known mentoring program.
2. How to make it possible that the mentor does not spend time explaining the purpose of the meeting to the client?
Solution: the employee does it on his own, when the mentoring program includes a block for explaining the purpose of the meeting with the client (the new employee draws up the explanation according to the given complementary materials).
3. How to make it possible that the mentor does not forget to make updates to the program, while not wasting time making them? This is an important task, as the company loses important information that is the property of the mentor. It is a separate task that needs to be solved additionally.
4. The mentor spends the main time (F3.4) to help the employee to implement the F3.1 function in a high-quality manner. This is the main purpose of mentoring!
Solution 1: to integrate as much as possible the implementation of the F3.1 function into F3.2, that is, in the process of preparing for the meeting and preparing reports to the mentor, the new employee plans his dialogue with the client in the direction of creating value by points. These subjects are defined as a meeting preparation and report template. During further discussion with the new employee, the mentor checks those points of the new employee’s report where the new employee achieved success and those points that need to be improved.
Solution 2: an electronic “journal” of mentoring, which allows you to see the subjects of creating value in which the new employee achieved success and the points in which the progress of the new employee is visible. The mentoring journal needs to be harmonized with the sales funnel and KPI accepted in the sales department.
5. Setting up tasks from the position of element elimination (trimming). We try to remove the element «mentor».
6. The mentor overcharges the new employee with many details which are not useful.
Solution: mentor has to transfer own experience according the checklist with titles of key notes due to such forms of activity that they are training now.
Table 3. Remove an item from the system.
| Rule | Rule description | Task after element elimination |
| Rule А | If there are no new employees, then a mentor in the system is not needed. | 1. How to eliminate the stuff turnover in the sales department? 2. How to do that when expanding the business of the company, the sales department does not become enormous? |
| Rule В | New employee educates himself. | How make it possible that a new employee quickly achieves KPIs in the allotted time for this without mentor assistance? |
| Rule С | Other elements of the system train a new employee, namely: a. mentoring program. b. client. c. competitors. d. other new employees. e. more experienced colleagues. | 1. How to organize correct feedback from clients on the quality of employees’ work with experience up to one year to correct their skills quickly? 2. How to get feedback from competitors on the work done by new employees with clients? 3. How to organize mutual training of new employees? 4. How to involve more experienced colleagues (not mentors) in the training process so that they do not spend time on mentoring? |
Follow the link to see more convinient view of the table.
Solutions:
Rule C, p. 2: it is easy to get feedback from competitors through interaction with them within the framework of entrepreneurial social communities; or within the framework of accelerators, if joint participation is planned, etc. The exchange of experience must be included in the agenda of several events.
Rule C, p. 3: organize periodic meetings of new employees to exchange experiences (one time per month) under the supervision of a mentor (the mentor’s time is won because he spends time not on a single person but immediately on a group). The secondary task: how to organize a high-quality reflection of experience at such meetings to use it in your company?
Rule C, paragraph 4: you need to organize a convenient removal of statistics from the CRM-system so that new employees can see:
a. The dynamics of the development of the client (project), which the more experienced colleagues see too.
b. A summary report which shows the dynamics of the development of clients (projects) in the context of their management by several employees, as a result of which the actions leading to the progress of the sales funnel (visible in comparison) immediately on the CRM system [4].
Conclusion:
In this example, Function Analysis made it possible to uncover significantly more particular problems in the system under study, and therefore, allowed more interesting solutions to be found than with causal analysis. It is worth noting that when conducting RCA+ while realizing several projects, we built much more detailed cause-and-effect chains. Respectively, with the help of such cause-effect chains a significant amount of determined problems provided many tasks and found a lot of interesting solutions, so the comparison of the number of tasks does not seem to be correct.
But one thing is clear: RCA+ sometimes requires construction of huge cause-and-effect chains when solving business problems. On the one hand, it is not convenient and on the other hand, it is quite difficult to determine the elements of an organized social system which represent the starting points to carry out research through RCA+. That is why there is a strong recommendation to use RCA+ when you analyze the ordinaire problem only. Using the RCA+ with a functional analysis would be conveniently, either using CECA with FA.
It is worth paying special attention to the degree of quality of the problems found by using Function Analysis. Solving a system of problems obtained as a result of Function Analysis allows us to obtain solutions with a high degree of detail. It is very important when solving organizational and managerial problems because when having deal with problems similar to these, we often get the directions of transformation at the output only, but not specific ideas that can be implemented in the company without long discussions to elaborate these ideas.
Advantages:
Function Analysis is a powerful TRIZ tool for analyzing organizational and managerial tasks. The advantages of this method from the point of view of solving organizational and managerial problems include a significant depth of problem analysis and obtaining a system of particular problems, solving which allows us to obtain solutions with a high degree of readiness to use, solutions that are sufficiently cleared of “information noise” (there is a lot of information noise in business tasks), and therefore, more powerful solutions.
Disadvantages:
The disadvantages of Function Analysis include the high complexity of the method, which complicates its application to organizational and managerial tasks, characterized by many factors affecting each of the elements of a business system under consideration. Many factors complicate definition of functions in business system. The author estimates that the use of this method for analysis of organizational and managerial tasks is a very promising approach, but is recommended either for small business systems or for individual sections of more complex organized social systems (in particular, business systems), where a time-consuming analysis is justified in terms of the impact on final result.
4 Appliсation of Schematization
Schematization is a method similar to Function Analysis which has one significant difference. Schematization allows us studying elements of a business system according to the logic of management hierarchy in the business system. The method was proposed by the author based on the previous works of G. Shchedrovitsky. This method is described in detail in [5].
Before applying this method, we recall the task once again: the mentoring process absorbs time of the experienced employees (which they could spend on working with key accounts instead).
We construct the model of the problem in accordance with the concepts of systems (Fig. 3).
The concepts of systems were defined by G. Shchedrovitsky in [8]:
- Elements of the system (subsystems, supersystems) — subjects and objects.
- Layers on the schema.
- Types of relationships between elements:
- — Connections.
- — Processes.
- — Functions.
- Generalized objects.
- Content of generalized objects.
- System framework.
Principe of problem statement as a result of schema’s analysis:
- Tasks at the contact points of a system and its supersystem.
- Tasks set by layers (this paragraph explains the main feature of the schematization and its significant difference from functional analysis. You can see 5 layers on the fig. 3). Common approach: how to improve the management of object A (located on a higher layer) by object B (located on a layer below)?
- Tasks set inside aggregated elements .
- Tasks assigned to processes, functions and relationships not investigated in paragraphs from 1 to 3.
- Tasks set at the junction of a generalized object / content of a generalized object.
A detailed description of system concepts and how to set tasks within the schema see in the author’s book [4]. The tasks posed by the results of the analysis of the circuit in fig. 3 (the matrix of tasks according the schema):
Table 4. Tasks according to schema of problem situation (Fig. 3). Table of tasks.
| Type of task | № | Task description |
| 1. Tasks at the contact points of the system and the supersystem | 1.1 | How to make it possible that the client requirements reduce time spentby an experienced employee in the process while maintaining the quality of training new employees? |
| 1.2 | How to make it possible that a new employee creates a value proposition for a client without the participation of a mentor? (the mentoring is eliminated from the new employees professional growing process) | |
| 2. Tasks set by layers | 2.1 | How to make it possible that the mentoring program corrects the activities of a new employee in such a way that an experienced employee would spend little of his time? |
| 2.2 | How to make it possible that in the process of providing feedback to the experienced employee a new employee affects the activities of the experienced employee so that the experienced employee spends as little time as possible? | |
| 2.3 | How to set up the process of transferring experience from an experienced employee to a new one so that an experienced employee does not waste his time on it? | |
| 2.4 | How to eliminate the suppression of the initiative of a new employee in the process of transferring experience from an experienced employee to a new one? | |
| 2.5 | How to make it possible that the competitor’s value proposition manages the client’s activities in such a way so that the transferring of experience from an experienced employee to a new one will be faster than what is happening now? | |
| 3. Tasks set inside aggregated elements. | 3.1 | Since the task is set in the field of B2B-sales, the client should be considered the most important aggregated element. How to make it possible that the various client’s Decision Centers and their interaction contributes to the transfer of experience from an experienced employee to a new employee, while minimizing time spent by an experienced employee? |
| 4. Tasks assigned to processes, functions and relationships not investigated before. | 4.1 | How to make it possible that the mentoring program updating is produced itself so that an experienced employee does not waste his time on it? |
| 5. Tasks set at the junction of a generalized object / content of a generalized object | 5.1 | How to make it possible that when the experienced employee is conducting mentoring, the personal characteristics of the new employee (strengths and weaknesses) are considered as much as possible so that an experienced employee does not waste his time on it? |
| 5.2 | How to make it possible that the existing competencies of a new employee minimize the participation of an experienced employee in the process of transferring his experience? |
Follow the link to see more convinient view of the table.
Matrix of solutions:
Table 5. Matrix of solutions due to the table of tasks (Table 4).
| Task’s number | Solutions description |
| 1.1 | 1.1.1. You need to know customer requirements in advance. It is achieved by ranking customers by customer’s channels and categories (according to ABCanalysis [4]), with a detailed description of customer requirements in accordance with their typology (customer portraits, benefits matrix [4]). 1.1.2. You need to explain the basic knowledge of a meeting with clients to a new employee. This issue can be successfully closed by less experienced employees instead of mentors (experienced employees). |
| 1.2 | To remove a mentor (experienced employee) is an enormous task. It is of a higher level than the rest of the tasks, which are set according to the scheme (Fig. 3), since it directly corresponds to the main goal defined in the initial conditions of the task. |
| 2.1 | 2.1.1. Transfer of trainings online. 2.1.2. Detailed explanations of the points of the mentoring program (the program is prepared in Google docs, the points of the program are made in the form of links [4], after which a new employee can receive a detailed comments and explanations); the use of infographics, pictograms (visualization to simplify the perception of this information). 2.1.3. Introduce the principle of “inverted education”: the employee studies the proposed materials, thus a usual transfer of the materials from the experienced employees is excluded. Next, the new employee presents his understanding to an experienced employee who draws up a corrective action plan in a preprepared template. |
| 2.2 | 2.2.1. It is necessary to somehow provide feedback in a special way, and for this it needs to be set, structured. Therefore, material should be integrated into the training modules to provide feedback on the completed tasks towards an experienced employee: the form of providing information, content requirements, the procedure for answering questions. Moreover, you need to create a whole “mentor kit”. 2.2.2 It is necessary to exclude any duplication of feedback. Therefore, it is recommended that the mentoring process be divided to elementary forms of activity and feedback should only be received per one form of activity at the same time. 2.2.3. additionally: if an employee cannot carry out initial form of activity in the course of one iteration, then other new employees should also be involved in the process of finalizing this form of activity (working in pre-prepared minigroups, mutual improving of their activity). |
| 2.3 | 2.3.1. it is necessary to clearly separate the process of transferring knowledge from the process of transferring experience. This solution is a part of solutions 2.1.3, 2.2.1, 2.2.2. It is necessary that the new employee have possibility to receive the necessary information (2.1.1, 2.1.3), and then adjust his feedback (2.2.2) according to his experience. 2.3.2. It is necessary to ask еру experienced employees to provide 3-5 typical cases for the most important subjects of sales activity with a detailed analysis of their solutions (e.g. record videos), and then present these cases to new employees. The second stage, when they start working out the office with their clients, they must demonstrate these forms of activity in contact with real customers, plan 2-3 sessions of improving their activity forms. Thus, we create a hierarchically organized system of mentoring, which depends on the degree of level of skills of new employees. It ensures that most of the transferred competencies will not disappear due to inability of a new employee to perceive practical particularities. 2.3.3. It is necessary to delegate mentoring in part of activity forms to less experienced employees, and to transfer part of the simplest activity forms to new employees, while self-learning of those parts where is no difficulty in transferring experience must be done by new employees. |
| 2.4 | Previous solutions lead us to a rather rigid mentoring structure, however, if you need to keep the maximum initiative for a new employee. 2.4.1. To include a block in the mentoring process to explain one’s own vision of the process of tasks in the studied forms of behavior by new employees. 2.4.2. To include the obligate work of new employees in the mentoring process to structure their activities, taking into account the comments of an experienced employee on important forms of activity, followed by the presentation of their vision to an experienced employee. |
| 2.5 | It is necessary to know how to collect and systematize information on the value of competitors’ proposals for the client, followed by using this information as a means of adjusting the forms of activity of a new employee. To do this: 2.5.1. It is necessary to create a database of competitors’ value propositions. 2.5.2. It is necessary to periodically update the hypotheses of customer needs in the matrix of benefits depending on the information received by the competitors’ value proposition database. 2.5.3. It is necessary to prepare a new employee for a meeting with a client using the matrix of advantages and a database of competitors’ value propositions. Besides, it is very useful to valuate new employees’ activity with a specially developed training card, i.e. an experienced employee gives recommendations on the completed card by the new employee |
| 3.1 | 3.1.1. Make preparations for a meeting with a client and the meeting with the decision makers by a separate process controlled by less experienced employees. An experienced employee only controls preparation for the meeting with a client and the meeting itself with the decision makers (the experienced employee helps prepare a business case only). |
| 4.1 | 4.1.1. A training manager (or an employee acting as a training manager in a small company) should make changes based on the results of periodic meetings with mentors and new employees who go through the mentoring process. |
| 5.1 | 5.1.1. HR is developing an employee competency profile. The mentoring program is adjusted depending on the employee competency profile — its theoretical and practical parts can be improved. If a profile shows high competencies for self-training, then the mentor sets control points of the mentoring process. The resource of an experienced employee is used at control points only! The rest of the entire process of mentoring the employee goes on their own according to the offline program or online training module (online training is preferable). |
| 5.2 | 5.2.1. see solution 5.1.1. |
Follow the link to see more convinient view of the table.
Conclusion:
As for author’s opinion, the use of schematization made it possible to get a little more interesting solutions than functional analysis due to the ability of schematization to study the layers of investigated business system, and also consider a person in a business system from two perspectives: from the standpoint of its business function and from the standpoint of its personal capabilities.
5 Conclusiones
Important note: Decisions found as a result of FA application and schematization application are not final. Further, it is supposed to form a system of contradictions and their subsequent solution, which will significantly improve the preliminary solutions found. As the author’s experience shows, this approach usually allows you to find solutions that satisfy the owner of the problem. The system of contradictions is not given in this article, since only the tools for preliminary analysis of the problem are considered.
Such tools as Function Analysis and Schematization provide the most in-depth analysis of the organizational and managerial problems and help to identify enough highquality preliminary management solutions. Such solutions should be considered preliminary because many of them will need to be further improved by resolving contradictions.
In addition, due to the consideration of some features of organized business systems, the schematization allows one to find a larger number of preliminary useful solutions, as it allows one to consider the interaction of system elements from some important points of view, that are not visible after carrying out functional analysis, especially for layers of control and not only generalized objects and content into ones, but also their relationships.
During analyzing layers using Schematization, 12 solutions were found (2.1.1 – 2.5.3). When considering the generalized objects / content into generalized objects relationships, the most valuable and previously unobvious solution in this project was found (5.5.1).
As a conclusion, we can consider Schematization as a promising tool for a comprehensive analysis of organizational and managerial tasks. While Schematization looks as a tool very similar as Functional Analysis, it is not the same tool due to identification of layers of control in the schema. This feature significantly changes the general appearance of the graphic model and affects approaches to its subsequent analysis.
Finally, we can compare all three methods according a number of criteria (Table 6).
Table 6. Comparison Table
| № | Measure | RCA+ | FA | Schematization |
| 1 | Coverage surface (the tool allows you to cover the entire investigated system or part of it) | + | ++ | +++ |
| 2 | Depth of the problem analyzing | +++ | ++ | + |
| 3 | The number of identified tasks from the original problem | + | +++ | +++ |
| 4 | How much the identified tasks correspond to the models adopted in TRIZ | +++ | ++ | ++ |
| 5 | How much time was spent analyzing (more signs «+» corresponds to less time) | +++ | + | + |
| 6 | Identification of hierarchical relationships between system elements (important for business tasks) | — | — | + |
| 7 | Dual consideration of a person: as an element of a business system and as a separate system with its own properties | — | — | + |
Follow the link to see more convinient view of the table.
References
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This article is published in «TRIZ Review: Journal of the International TRIZ Association – MATRIZ. Vol 2/1. April 2020», follow the link.