Ah Ha! Moments

some text

test

In the 40 Principles list we find principle #22, frequently described as “Blessing in Disguise”. There have been many reported examples of the use of this principle over the years, illustrating the value of using a negative aspect of a product or system in a positive way as opposed to spending time and resources to eliminate the “negative” thing.

This past week, down here in Tampa, FL, we expected to be hit by a major hurricane. Before it was known exactly where it would make landfall, all county emergency agencies posted to the web things that homeowners could do to prepare. One of these that I had not thought about was the simple question of “How do you know if your refrigerator lost power while you evacuated for a time?” You may have frozen food items that have thawed but them refrozen by the time you returned, making it impossible to know whether they were really safe to eat. Well here’s the answer!

Freeze a bag of water and put a penny on top of it. If the power goes off, the ice will turn to water and the penny will float to the bottom of the bag and, presto, you will know!

The plant had experienced two failures of piping due to waterhammer over the last several years. I said I know the problem, and I know the answer: install an accumulator. So I started working on the design and equipment selection. This was not working very well. The accumulator was physically to big and weighed too much. So I thought what else will do the job. Yes, a pressure relief valve. So I when to the equipment to see how that would work. During the inspection I saw a pressure control valve [PCV] that had its isolation valves in the wrong position. The light goes off. A PCV releases pressure when it is too high. Waterhammer occurs when the pressure is too high. Change the position of the isolation valves to solve the problem. Well, why did I not choose that solution at the beginning? The answer is that I had an incomplete understanding of the system and what I wanted to accomplish. I jumped to a solution that would work, but was not the best for the given situation. I knew TRIZ, but didn’t use it.

The moral to the story is I wasted a lot of time and energy and I know TRIZ. How much time and energy are you wasting because you do not know and use TRIZ.