Cannot format SSD - operation fails in Disk Utility (Integrated Technology Express)

I've seen this problem asked a few times with no resolution. It seems to apply to SSDs reporting as "Integrated Technology Express" in "System Information" on the USB bus but also some other SSDs. The solution seems to be to:

• connect the disk to a Windows machine
• delete the main data partition in Disk Manager (its not especially intuitive but right click on the rightmost partition of the removable disk)
• go back to your Mac and it will now format with one of the Apple partition schemes.