Multiobjective strategies for New Product Development in the pharmaceutical industry

New Product Development (NPD) constitutes a challenging problem in the pharmaceutical industry, due to the characteristics of the development pipeline. Formally, the NPD problem can be stated as follows: select a set of R&D projects from a pool of candidate projects in order to satisfy several criteria (economic profitability, time to market) while coping with the uncertain nature of the projects. More precisely, the recurrent key issues are to determine the projects to develop once target molecules have been identified, their order and the level of resources to assign. In this context, the proposed approach combines discrete event stochastic simulation (Monte Carlo approach) with multiobjective genetic algorithms (NSGAII type, Non-Sorted Genetic Algorithm II) to optimize the highly combinatorial portfolio management problem. In that context, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are particularly attractive for treating this kind of problem, due to their ability to directly lead to the so-called Pareto front and to account for the combinatorial aspect. This work is illustrated with a study case involving nine interdependent new product candidates targeting three diseases. An analysis is performed for this test bench on the different pairs of criteria both for the bi- and tricriteria optimization: large portfolios cause resource queues and delays time to launch and are eliminated by the bi- and tricriteria optimization strategy. The optimization strategy is thus interesting to detect the sequence candidates. Time is an important criterion to consider simultaneously with NPV and risk criteria. The order in which drugs are released in the pipeline is of great importance as with scheduling problems

Multiobjective strategies for New Product Development in the pharmaceutical industry

New Product Development (NPD) constitutes a challenging problem in the pharmaceutical industry, due to the characteristics of the development pipeline. Formally, the NPD problem can be stated as follows: select a set of R&D projects from a pool of candidate projects in order to satisfy several criteria (economic profitability, time to market) while coping with the uncertain nature of the projects. More precisely, the recurrent key issues are to determine the projects to develop once target molecules have been identified, their order and the level of resources to assign. In this context, the proposed approach combines discrete event stochastic simulation (Monte Carlo approach) with multiobjective genetic algorithms (NSGAII type, Non-Sorted Genetic Algorithm II) to optimize the highly combinatorial portfolio management problem. In that context, Genetic Algorithms (GAs) are particularly attractive for treating this kind of problem, due to their ability to directly lead to the so-called Pareto front and to account for the combinatorial aspect. This work is illustrated with a study case involving nine interdependent new product candidates targeting three diseases. An analysis is performed for this test bench on the different pairs of criteria both for the bi- and tricriteria optimization: large portfolios cause resource queues and delays time to launch and are eliminated by the bi- and tricriteria optimization strategy. The optimization strategy is thus interesting to detect the sequence candidates. Time is an important criterion to consider simultaneously with NPV and risk criteria. The order in which drugs are released in the pipeline is of great importance as with scheduling problems

Fuzzy region assignment for visual tracking

In this work we propose a new approach based on fuzzy concepts and heuristic reasoning to deal with the visual data association problem in real time, considering the particular conditions of the visual data segmented from images, and the integration of higher-level information in the tracking process such as trajectory smoothness, consistency of information, and protection against predictable interactions such as overlap/occlusion, etc. The objects' features are estimated from the segmented images using a Bayesian formulation, and the regions assigned to update the tracks are computed through a fuzzy system to integrate all the information. The algorithm is scalable, requiring linear computing resources with respect to the complexity of scenarios, and shows competitive performance with respect to other classical methods in which the number of evaluated alternatives grows exponentially with the number of objects.Research supported by projects CICYT TIN2008-06742-C02-02/TSI, CICYT TEC2008-06732-C02-02/TEC, SINPROB and CAM MADRINET S-0505/TIC/0255.publicad

Ergonomic risk factors associated with muscuslokeletal disorders in computer workstation

Ergonomics Risk Factors (ERFs) at computer works are commonly related to Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSDs) such as repetitive movements, doing work in awkward postures and static postures while prolonged seating at works. The main objective of this study was to investigate the ergonomic risk factors associated with MSDs among employees in computer workstation. In this study, the data were obtained by structured interview using self-reported questionnaire and direct observation. The results show that there is significant association between neck and stress score with musculoskeletal symptoms and among office workers. As a conclusion, by assessing ERFs at workplace, the effectiveness of workplace interventions can be evaluated without waiting for changes in the prevalence of MSDs

Parameter identification in Choquet Integral by the Kullback-Leibler diversgence on continuous densities with application to classification fusion.

International audienceClassifier fusion is a means to increase accuracy and decision-making of classification systems by designing a set of basis classifiers and then combining their outputs. The combination is made up by non linear functional dependent on fuzzy measures called Choquet integral. It constitues a vast family of aggregation operators including minimum, maximum or weighted sum. The main issue before applying the Choquet integral is to identify the 2M − 2 parameters for M classifiers. We follow a previous work by Kojadinovic and one of the authors where the identification is performed using an informationtheoritic approach. The underlying probability densities are made smooth by fitting continuous parametric and then the Kullback-Leibler divergence is used to identify fuzzy measures. The proposed framework is applied on widely used datasets

Agents that learn how to generate arguments from other agents

Learning how to argue is a key ability for a negotiator agent. In this paper, we propose an approach that allows agents to learn how to build arguments by observing how other agents argue in a negotiation context. Particularly, our approach enables the agent to infer the rulesfor argument generation that other agents apply to build their arguments. To carry out this goal, the agent stores the arguments uttered by other agents and the facts of the negotiation context where each argument is uttered. Then, an algorithm for fuzzy generalized association rules is applied to discover the desired rules. This kind of algorithm allows us (a) to obtain general rules that can be applied to dierent negotiation contexts; and (b) to deal with the uncertainty about the knowledge of what facts of the context are taken into account by the agents. The experimental results showed that it is possible to infer argument generation rules from a reduced number of observed arguments.Fil: Amandi, Analia Adriana. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tandil. Instituto Superior de Ingenieria del Software; ArgentinaFil: Monteserin, Ariel José. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Tandil. Instituto Superior de Ingenieria del Software; Argentin

SELECTED PAPER ABSTRACTS, WAEA ANNUAL MEETINGS, LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA, JULY 28-31, 2002

Teaching/Communication/Extension/Profession,