At German Arnold Umformtechnik GmbH & Co KG, the "innovation factory" is housed in the company's historic original building. Experienced 'old hands' work side by side with bright new talent on research and development projects for the new joining systems of tomorrow and the day after.

In the view of Georg Vogel, Head of Innovation Management at Arnold Umformtechnik, this combination of different generations of employees is one of the special keys to success. 'At first it took a while to become attuned to each other in the individual projects. But when they did, everybody involved realised that they could learn a lot from each other. As a result, the innovation factory has already come up with several clever solutions that spark the interest of customers.'

'We spent a long time thinking about how to address market demands for time, quality and cost as much as possible at this early stage, while at the same time not overlooking any potential solutions.

Among other things, this led us to base our innovation process on the TRIZ methodology developed by the Russian scientist Altschuller (1926-1998)', noted Vogel. The TRIZ development methodology ('TRIZ' is a Russian acronym for 'theory of inventive problem solving') is based on the following observations:

• The same basic problems and solutions occurrepeatedly in all fields of science and all
branches of industry;
• The evolution of technical systems follows specific trends;
• In many cases, true innovations only arise from external scientific insights (from outside the innovator's personal area of activity).

For example, a customer may require screws that remain tight under all conceivable conditions, or a customer may be looking for a new technology for joining sheet metal components. Using the TRIZ ideation process, the problems are analysed and suggestions for various problem solution scenarios are formulated on the basis of this analysis. The company's prototyping department then converts the proposals from the innovation factory into actual test prototypes. These prototypes are constructed as functional prototypes, but they are also built to quality standards closely approximating the requirements for regular series production and with an eye to selecting the best manufacturing method for series production if they ultimately get that far.This is followed by an extensive series of tests in the company's lab to scrutinise the potential solutions.

(Mr Pult Michael, Arnold Umformtechnik GmbH & Co KG, Germany. Tel: +49 (0)160/98908602. Fax: +49 (0)7947/821-195. Email: michael.pult@arnold-umformtechnik.de)