Major types of Real life problems - a classification

Variety of real life problems is endless, but we may make some sense out of this seeming sea of problems by classifying them first

We have gone through solving some problems and highlighting the principles, techniques or approaches that can be used equally effectively in real life problems. But did we ever talk about how many different types of real life problems can there be?

Though at first thought it seems that the whole world is filled to the brim with real life problems of infinite number of varieties, some sense of this seemingly intractable problem can be made.

Classification of real life problems according to the time you would get for reaching the solution

Real life problems can be classified in different ways. If we classify real-world problems according to degree of immediacy of action (or time available to solve the problem), we may have a classification as:

• Static problems – where the problem solver gets reasonable time to analyze, form a suitable strategy, evaluate feasible approaches and recommend a solution for implementation. Following are some of the Static problem sub-classes:

−     Choice problems – such as choosing a vendor, recruiting a new employee, choosing life partner, buying a new car, choosing an out-sourcing partner. AHP is an effective method for these problems

−     Ranking problems – such as ranking participants in a music competition, ranking students in a course, performance ranking of operational units in an organization, ranking universities in a country. AHP again is useful.

−      Evaluation problems – such as performance evaluation of employees, performance evaluation of telecom network. AHP is applicable here.

−     Design and R&D problems – design of a marketing campaign, design of a product, R&D problems. Most R&D problems are highly complex and inherently uncertain in nature. Need of innovation is high in these problems.

−     Strategic problems – such as forming a marketing strategy, forming a HR strategy, forming a material management strategy, making a national plan, budgeting and so on. Significant AHP applications exist in this area.

• Dynamic problems – where the events in the environment continue to happen generally independent of the decisions taken and time of decision making is short. Examples are: driving a car for going from one place to another, rectifying a poor health telecom network, counseling a patient, treating a patient. One can club tactical and operational problems in this category.
• Emergent problems – where decision making needs to be instantaneous and largely by intuition. Examples are: fire fighting, fighting at war-front, critical-care support in situations such as flood, earthquake and cyclone devastation.

We remind you again the important truth: There is no single method or strategy to deal with all kinds of problems (by problems we mean real-world problems).

Two important classes of problems that may occur in any of the above types: Multi-criteria decision making problems and Diagnostics & Cure class of problems:

·      Multi-Criteria Decision Making (or MCDM) problems: Life is full of choices and evaluations. While buying a car, you have to choose it amongst many options; while recruiting a marketing manager for your company you need to evaluate and choose one amongst the many aspirants for the positions; while selecting a location for your new factory, you need to make a hard choice between a few promising locations. Apart from choice problems, ranking, or even strategic decision making cases also fall under this category.

Solution of this class of problems involves evaluation of a set of options on the basis of a set of suitable qualitative criteria or characteristics. This class of problems is so abundant that from mid-sixties usable and effective methods were introduced and improved to treat this class problems as scientifically (with least amount of subjectivity) as possible. These problems were named separately as MCDM problems and today we have a mature set of powerful methods to deal with this special class of problems that are abundant around us.

To give the due respect it deserves, we will start a separate thread (or blog) on MCDM problem solving.

·      Diagnostics & Cure class of problems: All doctors, physicians, paramedics and related professionals work with this kind of problems. Furthermore, any artifact, that is, man-made object, or natural object that is failure prone, concerns us with this kind of problems. Artifacts at home can be your laptop, mobile device or washing machine; at work it may be a computer network, a communication network, or the sewage system; natural failure-prone object needing maintenance may be a chicken farm. If you think a while you will find that failures may occur at so many unthought-of places. Failure treatment is a separate subject.

If things fall in place, we will treat this subject in a separate thread which we term as blog here. 

Lastly we will have to mention innovation with serious intent now. It is clearly understood by most of the important people that in today’s competitive world, the most valuable resource is innovation. Accordingly we will take up a separate thread (or blog) on Innovation.

To sum up, we will shortly have two or three more additional but related blogs running in parallel. In this main blog we will continue to treat Real life Problem Solving as the situation unfolds.

Due to personal reasons, blogging may be a little slow for the next few days. Please hold your patience for a while. 

I leave you here today with best wishes .

Read my other blogs on Innovative idea generation and its basic principles and Get smart, get innovative usingTRIZ