FAST Creativity & Innovation: Rapidly Improving Processes, Product Development and Solving Complex Problems

by Charles Bytheway

Overview

FAST Creativity & Innovation is a landmark work authored by the creator of the method called Function Analysis Systems Technique (FAST) and pioneer of value engineering and value analysis. FAST is a powerful mapping technique that can graphically model goals, objectives, strategies, plans, systems, projects, products, processes, and procedures in function terms to identify function dependencies by organizing them into a cause and effect relationship. This technique quickly brings clarity to whatever situation or problem it is applied and greatly enhances productive thinking, creativity, innovation, and complex problem solving. Some of the basic concepts of FAST have been used for several decades in value engineering, which focuses on decreasing costs, improving quality and increasing value and profits. Derivatives of this original method such as fishbone diagrams, theory of constraints and process mapping came into use in fields such as quality management, new product development, manufacturing, and supply chain and project management. However, despite these developments, many of the original FAST concepts were either overlooked or misunderstood as greater opportunities for success remained untapped. FAST Creativity & Innovation groups all the original concepts together in great detail so you can learn them using easily understood step-by-step examples developed by the creator of this method. The creator and author, Charles Bytheway, presents a procedure that standardizes the method for creating FAST diagrams and function trees for rapidly improving processes, innovation, new product development and value engineering, and for effectively solving a wide variety of complex problems quickly. After reading this book you will have gained not only the basic skills of using this method, but the original insight of its developer for mastering its use in any environment. This guide is an outstanding tool for use in industry, a variety of college courses and for value engineers.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781932159660
Publisher:	Ross, J. Publishing, Incorporated
Publication date:	01/01/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	280
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Charles Bytheway was the first recipient of the Lawrence D. Miles Award by the Society of American Value Engineers (now SAVE International) for his creative development of FAST diagramming. He has published 19 papers on FAST diagramming and related subjects and has been quoted in numerous professional publications. Mr. Bytheway graduated with a BS in mechanical engineering in 1952 and a MS in mechanical engineering in 1961. Shortly before receiving the second degree, he earned his value engineering certificate from the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a Fellow of SAVE International and until retiring in 1981, Bytheway served as the Director of Value Engineering in Salt Lake City. Early in his retirement, he worked with a team which performed value engineering consulting on new construction for the Universities of California at Berkeley, Los Angeles, and San Diego. He has since started the mechanical engineering department at Salt Lake Community College.

Read an Excerpt

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

Creative people look for opportunities to extend their imagination into areas where others have made assumptions or areas others have not considered or ventured into. Dr. Albert Einstein has been termed a conceptual inventor or genius. He said, "Imagination is more important than knowledge." He found that by exercising his imagination, he could extend his imagination into unknown areas. I believe that you too can venture into new creative areas if you apply the principles of creativity presented in this book.

UTILIZING ONE'S IMAGINATION

The creating of ideas or utilizing one's imagination is no longer the secret of just a few educated and successful men and women. It is available to you, and history proves it. A boy who worked in a meat market and sold candy, soda water, and magazines on a train in his spare time increased his ability to think up new ideas that brought success and fame. That boy was Thomas Edison. Great ideas have generally come from people who were working in unrelated fields of endeavor. Samuel F. Morse was a portrait painter; he invented the telegraph. The steamboat was invented by an artist, Robert Fulton. Eli Whitney, a schoolteacher, invented the cotton gin and was the first person to build parts that were interchangeable, which made clock making a thriving industry.

Their success was based on personal decisions to think more deeply about things they observed from day to day. We have a lot more things to observe than they did. How many times have you seen a new product come on the market and thought to yourself, "I could have come up with that idea if I had just taken the time to think about it." Those opportunities are everywhere, just waiting for you to recognize them.

Earl Tupper is a more recent inventor. He took black polyethylene slag, a waste product from oil refineries, and made a tough, flexible, nonporous, nongreasy, and translucent plastic, known as Tupperware. An inventor by the name of Chester F. Carlson invented xerography and electrophotography. He is said to be the man who started it all, which has made it possible to print more than 100 copies a minute, to record and transmit electrostatic images and recordings, etc.

Every person has some creative ability. You are creative if you do one thing different today than you did yesterday. If you do two creative things tomorrow and add an additional one each day, your capabilities will continue to increase. My FAST Creativity technique will teach you how to stimulate your creativity and increase your creative opportunities. FAST is the acronym for Function Analysis System Technique. The logic questions involved in this technique are self-stimulating. Each answer is used to formulate two new questions. Both of these new questions force thinking into higher levels of understanding and into other methods of performing the same task.

For example, this technique will allow you to expand a simple one-line statement into a volume of information within a short period of time. As the information comes rolling in, it will spark your creativity and new ideas will begin to flow within your head. You have to experience it to believe it.

QUESTIONS TO ASK

This book teaches you the basic elements of function analysis and how FAST Creativity can change your method of thinking. It will teach you what questions to ask when you are selecting a task. Then it teaches you the questions to ask yourself, such as why you should devote energy toward a given task. Additional questions bring new facts to your attention and allow you to logically organize them. The logic associated with these questions also will help you identify any information that is missing.

Ten stimulating questions are used to analyze any subject. These questions will expand and enhance your thinking into new levels of understanding as this technique organizes your thinking and the information you have collected. When this happens, your creative mind will begin to ponder and apply those same questions to the new information you have gathered, and additional new ideas will begin to flow.

This path to creativity reminds me of when our grandchildren were living with us. My grandson was always asking me "why" over and over again about everything. As soon as I gave him a simple answer, he would ask "why" again and again about something else. As he got older, he started to ask "how" do you do this and "how" do you do that, over and over again. You see, as he got older, he was able to completely understand the reason "why" I was doing something; he then wanted to know "how" to do it himself.

WHY-HOW LOGIC

This proven "Why-How Logic" also taught you when you were young, and it continues to teach you today if you will take the time to recognize it. This Why-How Logic is the heart and meat of this creative technique. Maturity and experience help all of us to think deeper in so many different areas when we ask the same proven "why" and "how" questions. These two questions bring together facts so you can logically connect them and also understand them. They stimulate your creativity so you feel better about yourself as you experience an increase in your level of thinking and satisfaction in your accomplishments.

Someone asked the vice president and director of research at General Motors, Charles F. Kettering, how it happened that General Motors was making most of the diesel-electric locomotives in the country. He said, "You must have awfully good patent protection." Kettering replied: "Well, here's the reason. You see, a great many people think we're crazy. That is much better protection than any patent."

Several years ago a research engineer told me he thought I was crazy when I was teaching him my creativity technique. A week later, he became so enthused about a new gyroscope concept that he spent his evenings developing it on his own time. My technique is so simple that it is hard to believe it works so well. Basically, all I do is ask "why" and "how" over and over again, just like I did when I was young. I named these questions the "Why-How Logic Questions." I also ask several other thought-provoking questions that broaden my understanding and stimulate my creativity.

FAST AND TESTIMONIALS

After I discovered this technique, I gave a presentation on the subject in Boston, Massachusetts. During the presentation, I displayed a diagram to show the answers to the Why-How Logic Questions and demonstrated how the logic tied the answers together. I named this diagram a FAST Diagram. Most users just call my technique "FAST." I have been overwhelmed by its acceptance. Here are two comments from the hundreds who have written me:

We are confident that, if we keep to the rules of your FAST approach, the answer we seek will be found.

— Leon M. Turner Management Consultant John P. Young & Associates Hawthorne, Australia

The FAST Diagram clarifies a problem and pinpoints the area to apply creativity.

— Richard J. Park Manager, Value Control Chrysler Corporation Detroit, Michigan

After I discovered that my technique works on any type of problem, I stated this fact in an article. A director for the state of Pennsylvania went looking for a solution to the state's financial problems because the state was in bankruptcy or close to it at the time. After a little searching, he came upon my article, his staff applied my technique, and he wrote me the following:

FAST reduces the time for complex analysis ... One diagram may be worth more than many times one thousand words. It can be understood and appreciated by almost anyone.

— Donald P. Goss, Director Bureau of Systems Analysis Commonwealth of Pennsylvania Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

A staff member of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania wrote the following about the WhyHow Logic Questions and FAST:

The process of answering the formula makes "creative planning" both inescapable and so easy that program managers may not realize how creative they really are. This formula changes the brainstorming list from almost to fully complete! ... An invalid answer is almost automatically apparent even to a person not skilled in the management of the program being planned ... One Pennsylvania agency produced an agency plan by another method which required 638 pages. FAST would produce a more comprehensive and meaningful plan using less than 50 pages!"

I visited the Chrysler plant in Detroit, Michigan shortly after it started to use my FAST technique. I was informed that the plant had been so successful using it that the company introduced it into its Canadian operations and was in the process of extending it to its England operations. The following was written to Sperry Univac's (a division of the Sperry Rand Corporation) division manager in Salt Lake City: We feel that there is no question that the results produced would have never been accomplished without the use of the FAST Diagram to stimulate and organize our thinking and to pinpoint the specific area for improvement.

— H.T. Hearon, ComptrollerChrysler Corporation

A COMMUNICATION TOOL

An example of the effectiveness of FAST was given by Jerry Kaufman of Houston, Texas, and I quote:

I have used FAST to improve an orthopedic procedure replacing a knee joint for the producer of prosthesis. The closing comment was that "this is the first time the medical doctors and engineers were able to communicate on the same level."

BASIC CONCEPTS

Some of the basic concepts of my FAST Creativity technique have been used throughout the world by hundreds of people who have achieved unbelievable success. As I have reviewed how these people are applying my technique, I realize that some of my original concepts have not been fully explained or understood; therefore, I will cover those concepts in greater detail in this book. You have the opportunity to learn them first. This book groups all my concepts together so you can learn them firsthand as you follow a variety of examples step by step.

CHAPTER 2

SPARKED BY FUNCTION

In 1960 I experienced a new way of thinking. I learned about this new way of thinking when I was assigned to conduct the first value engineering seminar within the Sperry Rand Corporation. Shortly after receiving this assignment, I enrolled in the first value engineering class ever taught at a university, at the University of California at Los Angeles. This was a workshop class designed to teach a technique developed by Lawrence D. Miles, a General Electric purchasing manager. The technique was called value analysis and it is applied to any type of product or service.

VALUE ANALYSIS

Value analysis is a technique that focuses "on one objective — equivalent performance for lower cost." In order to achieve this objective, Mr. Miles identifies and names the functions performed by various products and services. He says that the only reason a customer purchases a product is because of the function it performs. For example, a customer purchases a lawn mower because it performs the function "cut grass." A customer purchases an electric shaver because it performs the function "remove whiskers." Every product performs or accomplishes at least one basic function.

This was an entirely new way of thinking for me. Thinking in terms of functions sparked within me new creative insight into almost everything I looked at. It opened my mind to creative opportunities beyond my experience. In the following section, I will tell you about giving names to functions. In Chapter 3, I will tell you more about my experience in discovering functions while attending UCLA.

NAMING FUNCTIONS

Names are given to functions. The first word of the name is always an active verb and the last word of the name is always a noun. "Charge battery" is the name of a function, "charge" being the active verb and "battery" being the noun. The name given to a function describes what is to be accomplished without disclosing the method of accomplishment. Figure 2.1 lists the names of four automobile functions.

A customer who is concerned about the water he or she drinks and wants to perform the function "limit impurities" may purchase a water distiller, distilled water, a filtering system, or some other type of water-conditioning system. This method of naming functions makes each name a springboard for creative development. It sparks within each individual who reads the name of a function an opportunity to visualize or imagine different ways a function can be accomplished. I know of no other tool or technique that has such a dynamic creative effect on the human mind.

Take a moment and ponder each of the names given to the functions listed in Figure 2.2. Note that the first word of each name is an active verb and the last word is a noun. As you read each name, think of what it means to you. Think of the various ways you could accomplish each function.

The reader of the function may determine how each function is to be accomplished. If I ask you to give me three ways to accomplish each of the functions listed in Figure 2.2, you probably could do it. These are actual functions named by participants who have performed valuable studies. Those who conduct value analysis studies usually take an existing product, which has been designed by someone else, and then identify all of the functions performed by that product. They list these functions either as "use functions" or "aesthetic functions." Use functions require something to be accomplished so a person will want to purchase and use the product, whereas aesthetic functions require something to be accomplished so one or more of the five senses will make the product more desirable than a competitive product. Examples of these two different types of functions are given in Figure 2.3.

LOOKING AT FUNCTIONS

The people who use Mr. Miles's value analysis technique are trying to maintain the product's performance and at the same time reduce its cost to the potential purchaser or buyer. Their approach is to first identify the names of all the functions presently being performed by a given product. For example, if the product is an air conditioner, they first identify the basic function of the entire unit. They might name the basic function of an air-conditioning unit "cool environment." Then they identify all the other functions presently being performed within the entire unit; 10, 20, or perhaps 30 functions are usually identified and named by analyzing the various parts. A partial list of functions for this unit is shown in Figure 2.4.

Once all the functions have been named, all the physical parts that allow each function to be performed are identified. Since each part costs a given amount of time and money to manufacture and assemble, a cost can be assigned to each function by accumulating the cost of all the parts that collectively perform each given function. The basic function is assigned the total cost, and all other functions are assigned a portion of that total cost. Once this cost analysis task has been completed, the next step is to creatively see if other ways of performing the basic function can be conceived. The other functions that have been assigned the greatest cost are then explored to see if a more creative method of performing those functions can be conceived or discovered.

This approach divorces a person's thinking from the various parts that allow the product to exist and permits him or her to concentrate solely on functions. This method of analyzing a product usually removes 30 to 40 percent of the cost compared to 5 or 10 percent when using the normal cost reduction techniques used to analyze parts. Some of these normal cost reduction techniques are listed in Figure 2.5.

FUNCTIONS CHANGED MY LIFE

When I was taught how to name functions, it changed my life and my thinking. It changed me even more when I discovered that I could name functions for everything, even for just a few words expressed within a sentence or phrase. For example:

The opposite of love is selfishness

yields the following two functions:

Express Love Avoid Selfishness

Naming functions can do the same for you if you will take the time to learn how to name functions properly and learn the value of asking "why" and "how" for each function you name. Functions can be given names for products, procedures or processes, expressions, goals, things to do, or almost anything else, as shown in Figure 2.6.

The function name does not tell how something is to be accomplished; that is left up to the imagination and creativity of those who decide how that function is to be accomplished. However, names given to functions influence the thinking and potential creativity of those performing the analysis. When function naming is learned and done correctly, a two-word phrase offers opportunities for major development.

(Continues…)

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Copyright © 2007 J. Ross Publishing, Inc..
Excerpted by permission of J. Ross Publishing, Inc..
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Table of Contents

Foreword by Richard J. Park,
Foreword by Martin Hyatt,
About the Author,
Acknowledgments,
Web Added Value,
1 Introduction,
2 Sparked by Function,
3 Discovering Functions,
4 Why-How Logic,
5 Selecting a Project,
6 Participants,
7 Intuitive Logic,
8 Project 1: Lightbulb,
9 Project 2: Timing Device,
10 Project 3: Love,
11 Project 4: Three-Ton Heat Pump,
12 Project 5: Military Communication Device,
13 Generalizing and Undisclosing Methods,
14 Other Applications of FAST,
15 Summary of FAST Procedure,
Appendix A: Constructing FAST Diagrams,
Appendix B: Glossary of FAST Terms and Thought-Provoking Questions,