Making the Case for Quality

June 2017

Virtual Reality for Quality

by Sunil Kumar V. Kaushik

Imagine if every organization could have the luxury of a 3,000 square-foot room with tools purely ded-
At a Glance . . .
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-
• Virtual reality (VR) sive—but virtual reality can bridge the gap and also make it available for very little cost.
applications help in
connecting the processes,
problems, and knowledge
The Virtual Reality Cardboard
beyond geographies.
Sunil Kaushik, freelance Six Sigma trainer and consultant, first saw the potential for virtual reality
• Gemba is a Japanese
(VR) to be used in training and quality while in China. There, children were playing a VR game using
word for “the real place,”
or the place where the
their phones and Google Cardboard, an inexpensive VR headset.
crime scene happened,
and is a very important Later, while training a North American steel company on TRIZ, there was a problem in the shop floor
tool when providing that Kaushik had to resolve virtually. The quality team put in a lot of effort to record the process and
training on lean principles. play the video on WebEx, but because the camera was a bit too far away, it covered too many things in
VR facilitates gemba. one frame and was not much help.
• The ideality VR app
helps in training TRIZ Kaushik thought that if VR were used, all the team had to do was shoot a 360-degree picture using a
virtually, converting smartphone. Then Kaushik could use a VR headset and be virtually “on” the shop floor.
invisible management
problems to physical “Just like that, I realized the power of virtual reality in quality and began applying it. Because I was
world problems, taking the
traveling, I carried an inexpensive smartphone. It did not have many features, its storage space was
process or project toward
ideality, and more. 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.

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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
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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.
All USEFUL functions
Ideality = →∞
All HARMFUL functions
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.
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.
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.
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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.
 • The Doctoral School in Business Administration, The
ACTIVITY
ACTIVITY
Bucharest University of Economic Studies
ACTIVITY
ACTIVITY
• Bisini Wine Company, Tbilisi, Georgia

RESOURCE
Summary
EFFORT The chart below shows the evolution of the ideality application.
COMPLEXITY
TIME Some of the advantages to this approach are:

• Affordability. VR headset costs generally range from

SCOPE $3-$20.
COST
• Infrastructure cost savings. Brainstorming can be done
Open contradictions – 12
Process steps – 10 literally anywhere and anytime.
Resolved contradictions – 16 • 3-D visualization. Makes the process of innovation much
easier and simpler. 3-D models of employee stress, risks,
and effort can be created.
Scene from the ideality application (above). The cubes are the • Ability to convert an invisible (management) problem to
parameters and the red lines are the contradictions. a physical world problem, identify the contradictions, and
resolve them through TRIZ.
The functionalities of the ideality application are: • More effective training. Because people think while using
pictures, it facilitates greater understanding and retention,
• Create a process or product model with as many objects as
which affects decision making.
needed; each object represents a parameter or a process step
• Greater engagement. Being able to walk through the 3-D
(e.g., cost, time, scope, etc.)
space and contradictions creates greater engagement.
• Link the contradictions
• Ability to create anything that cannot be created in a
• Define ideality
physical space with very low cost.
• Estimate the number of contradictions
• Update/export/import process step-related information from
the web Next Steps
• View TRIZ 9 windows and the principles related to the
Ideality is now an open-source project with expanding func-
contradiction inside the 3-D world
tionalities. Quality professionals are encouraged to use it and
• Play simulation and ideality game
contribute to its growth.
The application was used and shared in numerous platforms
successfully for many groups, including: For More Information

• Project managers of government/public administration/EU • To contact the author of this case study, email Sunil Kaushik
co-funding agencies in Athens, Greece at sunilkaushik15@gmail.com.
• Post-graduate students of TQM (University of Piraeus • To view this and other ASQ case studies, visit the ASQ
Athens Greece) Knowledge Center at asq.org/knowledge-center/case-studies.

Evolution of the ideality application About the Author

Open-source Sunil Kaushik, PMP, SPSM, CPSCM, ASQ Certified Six
application with
ideality-based Sigma Black Belt (CSSBB), is a freelance Six Sigma trainer
VR process process modeling and consultant. Also an ASQ Influential Voices author, Kaushik
modeling for
visualization, blogs at www.trainntrot.com. He travels the world to promote
brainstorming, and sustainable quality and conducts a free virtual workshop for
problem solving
organizations and universities to help in creating virtual 3-D
Training and real-time
problem solving with process mapping.
real 360-degree images
Training Lean
Six Sigma and TRIZ
using geomentric objects

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