Homayoun Lahijanian - Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Tehran, Iran
Ehsan Khavandkar - Department of Industrial Engineering, Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST), Tehran, Iran

The traditional approach to improve the safety of processes is to introduce additional safety equipment and protective devices such as valves, alarms, safety interlocks, and other active systems to detect leaks and process deviations. When new problems arise, more add-on protective equipments is installed to deal with them. In the end, what results is a system whose design is complicated by numerous layers of expensive, add-on protective equipments which often constitute a significant part of the operating cost of the plant. An inherently safe process avoids or reduces hazards instead of controlling them. It relies on naturally occurring phenomena and robust design and eliminates or greatly reduces the need for instrumentation or administrative controls, thereby reducing the costs related to safety and environmental protection. Although it is possible to apply inherent safety principles at later stages of design, the scope for implementation is greatest in the earliest stages, in particular during route selection. Analternative approach is to assist the designers identify creative design solutions that overcome the technical conflicts in designing safe process. Creative problem solving can be broadly classified into intuitive and analytical methods. This paper suggests an analytical approach to creative problem solving in which special attention is given to TRIZ, a popular method for systematic creativity. We present a brief overview of the different methods for enhancing creativity support and present a set of characteristics, principles, as well as a process design contradiction matrix to deal with inherently safe process design.

TRIZ; Safety; Creative problem solving; Safe Process; Innovation; Conflict; Analytical method; Intuitive method;Process design