Problem formulation in inventive design using Doc2vec and Cosine Similarity as Artificial Intelligence methods and Scientific Papers

• Published in: Engineering applications of artificial intelligence 2022-03, Vol.109 (104661), p.104661, Article 104661
• Main Authors: Hanifi, Masih, Chibane, Hicham, Houssin, Remy, Cavallucci, Denis
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Automatic information retrieval; Computer Aided Engineering; Computer Science; Document embedding; Inventive design; Problem formulation; Scientific data; Similarity computation
• ISSN: 0952-1976; 1873-6769
• DOI: 10.1016/j.engappai.2022.104661

Over the past decades, companies have continually sought out approaches that help them reduce the innovation cycle time due to its importance in their success. Among these approaches are TRIZ-based systematic inventive design processes, such as Inventive Design Methodology (IDM). Nevertheless, the application of these methods in the initial analysis, which requires an exhaustive gathering of information at the start of the innovation project without considering its impact on the final solution, decreases the agility of these types of processes. Consequently, a lean-based method called Inverse Problem Graph (IPG) has been proposed to formulate problems in the initial analysis phase of the inventive design process. However, the manual gathering of essential information to create a network of problems in the IPG method requires time and effort, which impresses the method’s capability. This paper integrates an automatic information retrieval approach, using Doc2vec and Cosine Similarity as Artificial Intelligence methods and Scientific Papers, into the IPG process. The integration helps to introduce a new method for the initial analysis phase of inventive design, helping to resolve part of its drawback in collecting essential knowledge from Scientific Data. The capability of the proposal is then tested through an application using a Lattice Structure case study. •This study introduces an automatic information retrieval-based method to formulate a problem situation.•It integrates the doc2vec model and the cosine similarity method into the inventive design process.•The proposal facilitates and accelerates problem formulation in the inventive design.•The proposed method increases the accuracy of problem formulation in the inventive design.