Quantifying the advantages of TRIZ in sustainability through life cycle assessment

This paper provides a quantitative evaluation of how much the application of the main TRIZ (Russian acronym for Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) strategies resulted in an increase of the sustainability of different devices by reducing their environmental impacts. The used dataset consists of 144 case studies of Comparative Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) extracted from 119 scientific articles. They were manually analysed and classified by analogy according to the TRIZ strategies. These latter deal with “Dematerialization of the device” through an increased involvement of fields, “Better exploitation of the resources” available in the system or the working environment, “Structure re-design” for eliminating the conflicting parts and properties, “Increasing the control” of the device during the functioning. While the considered environmental impact categories are: global warming potential, acidification potential, eutrophication potential, particulate matter formation, fossil resources consumption and water consumption. The study identified promising results in all the TRIZ strategies for almost all the environmental impact categories, with percentage reductions on average between 20 and 50%. Compared to previous studies in the literature, these obtained results provide more rigorous, consistent, and broad quantitative evidence about the validity of the individual TRIZ strategies in eco-design. At the same time, some common mechanisms of application of the TRIZ strategies were identified both when they provided the greatest and least environmental benefits. They enriched the discussion of the results, highlighting the many factors that are involved in evaluation, both about the device and external (e.g. electricity mix) and demonstrating that TRIZ’s success in eco-design is not a foregone conclusion, despite the many positive opinions in the literature. The results and their discussion provide data history for the designer wishing to use TRIZ in eco-design.