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Making the Case for Quality

June 2017

Imagine if every organization could have the luxury of a 3,000 square-foot room with tools purely ded- icated for process improvement, innovation, and brainstorming and have access to stakeholders from different geographies and experts who are outside your organization. It would be extremely expen- sive—but virtual reality can bridge the gap and also make it available for very little cost.

The Virtual Reality Cardboard

Sunil Kaushik, freelance Six Sigma trainer and consultant, first saw the potential for virtual reality (VR) to be used in training and quality while in China. There, children were playing a VR game using their phones and Google Cardboard, an inexpensive VR headset.

Later, while training a North American steel company on TRIZ, there was a problem in the shop floor that Kaushik had to resolve virtually. The quality team put in a lot of effort to record the process and play the video on WebEx, but because the camera was a bit too far away, it covered too many things in one frame and was not much help.

Kaushik thought that if VR were used, all the team had to do was shoot a 360-degree picture using a smartphone. Then Kaushik could use a VR headset and be virtually “on” the shop floor.

“Just like that, I realized the power of virtual reality in quality and began applying it. Because I was traveling, I carried an inexpensive smartphone. It did not have many features, its storage space was low, and it had cracks in the display, but still it was fun—and useful. It was then that I began research- ing VR development tools and other applications that can be used with it,” Kaushik said.

• Virtual reality (VR) applications help in connecting the processes, problems, and knowledge beyond geographies.

• Gemba is a Japanese word for “the real place,” or the place where the crime scene happened, and is a very important tool when providing training on lean principles. VR facilitates gemba.

• The ideality VR app helps in training TRIZ virtually, converting invisible management problems to physical world problems, taking the process or project toward ideality, and more.

Virtual Reality for Quality

At a Glance . . .

by Sunil Kumar V. Kaushik

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Using VR Cardboard for Training

Kaushik had conducted Lean Six Sigma (LSS) and TRIZ train- ings both in the classroom and virtually via WebEx for several years. Throughout the trainings, the classroom experience proved to be more efficient—and effective—than the virtual training in terms of time, learning impact, and student engage- ment. He credits this to greater hands-on learning and students being better able to see and understand concepts.

“When I started using the origami technique when training people on Lean Six Sigma, many factors improved because it was a more practical approach. Students were more engaged and better able to understand concepts. I believed VR could offer similar benefits for students who could not be physically in the classroom,” Kaushik explained.

Kaushik began collecting and creating 360-degree pictures suit- able for VR to help students better understand various concepts. Through teaching, he observed non-engineer students had more difficulty understanding the TRIZ principles and parameters.

Using Unity, a cross-platform game engine development soft- ware, he created a 360-degree virtual classroom that included different 3-D geometric objects such as cubes, cones, and squares. Students then used their smartphones and Google Cardboard to view the virtual environment.

“The learning curve reduced by 63 percent, based on the three beta trainings that were conducted,” said Kaushik. The reason

is the students are not “in the classroom,” but rather, in the vir- tual space where the problem or the concept is, or gemba, the Japanese word for “the real place,” or the place where impor- tant actions happened. In business, gemba refers to the place where value is created; in manufacturing, the gemba is the fac- tory floor.

Kaushik successfully utilized gemba during lean trainings. He recommended the client use the real 360-degree pictures of the workplace using the Google Cardboard tool during the trainings. This way, participants could move around the office to identify wastes and improve.

Once implemented, the client reported immediate benefits because problem solving was done directly on the problem, in real time, with the trainer and the team. The client began involv- ing their customers, and the outcomes were presented to the end customer using VR. Customer satisfaction was high, and the total investment for the VR was less than $70 for 13 users.

Innovation: VR Ideality App

TRIZ has a very powerful concept called ideality. According to ideality, the ideal state of the system is where all its functions are achieved without causing any problem.

Ideality = All USEFUL functions → ∞

All HARMFUL functions

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Kaushik married TRIZ and ideality with VR, calling it the “complete solution for innovation.” The system is better, faster, low cost, low error, and low maintenance. In other words, an ideal system consists of all positives and no nega- tives. Any problem that stops the product, service, or function from reaching the ideality becomes a contradiction. For example, when one attempts to improve a parameter and a dif- ferent parameter changes along with it, this is viewed as an undesired result.

Kaushik had designed project dashboards for an organiza- tion, illustrating the contradictions that were stopping it from reaching ideality. One of the major problem in using the TRIZ contradiction matrix, which details the 40 principles that have been used most frequently to solve a problem that involves a particular contradiction, is that it was created by engineers for engineers. Ergo, identifying the right contradiction for a man- agement problem proved to be difficult.

Kaushik had a choice to translate the entire contradiction matrix for management professionals or convert a management prob- lem to an engineering problem. He found that VR played a key role in the latter option.

He created his first VR ideality application for a client’s proj- ect management in software development. An ideality project, according to TRIZ methodology, should deliver all the functions (scope) in no time (schedule), and at no cost.

With this goal, Kaushik used Unity software to create a model with three cubes in a three-dimensional virtual space. The cubes represented time, cost, and scope. Cubes were used because all the TRIZ principles and parameters can be applied on it. For example, if a sphere was choosen, the TRIZ principle spheri- odicity cannot be applied, as it is already spherical. The line between the cubes became a contradiction.

For each of these contradictions, there is a set of TRIZ princi- ples in the contradiction matrix that can be used to resolve them. Sometimes the contradictions are resolved through an activity or the principle would give rise to a new contradiction.

A model was created with 32 contradictions in the virtual space. The reason for using the cube was to convert the project man- agement problems to physical world problems, so the TRIZ principle could be directly applied to it.

For example, cost is represented as a cube. To reduce the cost, the area or the volume of the cube should be reduced and the TRIZ contradiction matrix can be directly applied to the cube. Using an inexpensive VR headset, the stakeholders could virtu- ally “walk through” the 3-D space and see the activities and the contradictions, regardless of their geographic locations.

Armed with data gathered during the walk-through, the team presented its findings and the project status using VR. This helped the client understand the contradictions and how the team planned to eliminate them. The client now uses a new metric— the number of contradictions away from ideality—which is not linked to the market benchmark but the ideality itself. Hence, it is more effective and has a very vast scope for innovation.

Using these functionalities, Kaushik developed an application called ideality that can help organizations define their ideal product or service and identify the gap between their current product or service and its ideal, identify the contradictions, and create a model in a virtual room. Using VR, multiple users from different geographies can “come into” the room, walk through the process and contradictions, visualize and innovate, train on the product or service, identify new contradictions, resolve those conradictions, and move closer to ideality with zero cost incurred.

Bisini Wine Company

The application was used to develop a 3-D space for a success- ful wine company in Tbilisi, Georgia. A 3-D model was created to offer a virtual tour to their stakeholders, which included employees, customers, investors, and more.

Kaushik provided pictorial information on the process, starting at the vinyard and ending at shipping. In total, there were 45 process steps and the contradiction between each of the process steps. This was shown to new employees via VR, so they could literally “see” the big picture and better understand processes and challenges within the organization.

Because Unity software is traditionally used for game develop- ment, Kaushik integrated a functionality where the executives, senior management, middle management, and ground-floor employees could play a real-time game by identifying new contradictions, helping them move the organization closer and closer to ideality. As a result, employees were able to innovate, engage, and have a direct impact on improving the organiza- tion’s quality.

After only four months of use by a senior leadership team, the number of contradictions went down down by 23 percent and the ideas generated by the employees had gone up by 92 percent.

Example

• Contradiction 1: If the scope increases, the time/schedule increases. • Contradiction 2: If the scope increases, the cost increases. • Contradiction 3: If the cost decreases, the time increases.

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Scene from the ideality application (above). The cubes are the parameters and the red lines are the contradictions.

The functionalities of the ideality application are:

• Create a process or product model with as many objects as needed; each object represents a parameter or a process step (e.g., cost, time, scope, etc.)

• Link the contradictions • Define ideality • Estimate the number of contradictions • Update/export/import process step-related information from

the web • View TRIZ 9 windows and the principles related to the

contradiction inside the 3-D world • Play simulation and ideality game

The application was used and shared in numerous platforms successfully for many groups, including:

• Project managers of government/public administration/EU co-funding agencies in Athens, Greece

• Post-graduate students of TQM (University of Piraeus Athens Greece)

• The Doctoral School in Business Administration, The Bucharest University of Economic Studies

• Bisini Wine Company, Tbilisi, Georgia

Summary

The chart below shows the evolution of the ideality application.

Some of the advantages to this approach are:

• Affordability. VR headset costs generally range from $3-$20.

• Infrastructure cost savings. Brainstorming can be done literally anywhere and anytime.

• 3-D visualization. Makes the process of innovation much easier and simpler. 3-D models of employee stress, risks, and effort can be created.

• Ability to convert an invisible (management) problem to a physical world problem, identify the contradictions, and resolve them through TRIZ.

• More effective training. Because people think while using pictures, it facilitates greater understanding and retention, which affects decision making.

• Greater engagement. Being able to walk through the 3-D space and contradictions creates greater engagement.

• Ability to create anything that cannot be created in a physical space with very low cost.

Next Steps

Ideality is now an open-source project with expanding func- tionalities. Quality professionals are encouraged to use it and contribute to its growth.

For More Information

• To contact the author of this case study, email Sunil Kaushik at [email protected].

• To view this and other ASQ case studies, visit the ASQ Knowledge Center at asq.org/knowledge-center/case-studies.

About the Author

Sunil Kaushik, PMP, SPSM, CPSCM, ASQ Certified Six Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB), is a freelance Six Sigma trainer and consultant. Also an ASQ Influential Voices author, Kaushik blogs at www.trainntrot.com. He travels the world to promote sustainable quality and conducts a free virtual workshop for organizations and universities to help in creating virtual 3-D process mapping.

Training Lean Six Sigma and TRIZ using geomentric objects

Training and real-time problem solving with real 360-degree images

VR process modeling for visualization, brainstorming, and problem solving

Open-source application with ideality-based process modeling

Open contradictions – 12 Process steps – 10 Resolved contradictions – 16

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Evolution of the ideality application