It's great if you are a naturally born creative thinker. Some people don't think they are, but everyone has a creative side.

Using creativity tools and creative thinking is beneficial in any work or personal problem.  

Yes, someone can be creative in a quiet room with no distractions, but put children in a sandbox with the freedom to build a castle of their own choosing, and you have the recipe for great future problem-solving skills.

Creativity is most often seen as exploring and dreaming up new ideas, new approaches, new products. Using a forceful approach may stymie the process. Think about a 4-year-old child in a sandbox making castles. The castle either falls down or gets kicked down, and is as quickly replaced as it was destroyed. Playfulness and exploring the world (sand castles) is an important part of creative problem solving, so stay away from forcing someone to build sand castles.

This is probably a nature/nurture type of question. Yes, some people are naturally creative and some aren't. But, creativity can be better described as being on a continuum. Everyone has a spot on the creativity continuum, but like most continuums, people can learn, practice, and acquire skills to further their creative problem-solving skills.

Helping employees, peers, bosses, or anyone else for that matter to be creative is easy as long as you are encouraging, listening well, helping them explore, being playful and open minded, and keeping them from falling into phrases like "I can't," "It won't work," etc...

Creativity tools are plentiful, and picking one that works best for your situation has probably already been researched and is being used in manufacturing environments all over the world.

Creativity tools can and have been used successfully in the systematic model of PDAC. These creative tools typically work best with helping to reframe problem descriptions and generating creative and helpful solutions.

Everyone is trying to make their product better, cheaper, more useful, and available to more users. Even a small improvement can make the difference between making a profit or going broke. Creativity tools are often touted for their breakthrough ideas and improvements, but even a small breakthrough can move a product forward.