Many companies use product families in order to offer product variants that appeal to different market segments while minimizing costs. Because the market demand is generally not uniform for all possible product variants, during the design phase a decision must be made as to which variants will be offered and how many. This thesis presents a new approach to solving this problem. The product is defined in terms of performance parameters. The market demand is captured in a preference model and applied to these parameters in order to represent the total potential market. The number and placement of the product variants are optimized in order to maximize percentage of the potential market that they span. This method is applied to a family of mountain bikes and a family of flow-regulating disks used in industrial applications. These examples show that usage of this method can result in a significant increase in potential market and a significant reduction in production costs.

Un système de recommandation a pour objectif de recommander à un utilisateur, appelé utilisateur actif, des ressources pertinentes pour lui. Le filtrage collaboratif (FC) est une approche de recommandation très répandue qui exploite les préférences exprimées par des utilisateurs sur des ressources. Le FC repose sur l'hypothèse que les préférences des utilisateurs sont cohérentes entre elles, ce qui permet d'inférer les préférences d'un utilisateur à partir des préférences des autres utilisateurs. Définissons une préférence spécifique comme une préférence qui ne serait partagée pour aucun groupe d'utilisateurs. Un utilisateur possédant plusieurs préférences spécifiques qu'il ne partage avec aucun autre utilisateur sera probablement mal servi par une approche de FC classique. Il s'agit du problème des Grey Sheep Users (GSU). Dans cette thèse, je réponds à trois questions distinctes. 1) Qu'est-ce qu'une préférence spécifique ? J'apporte une réponse en proposant des hypothèses associées que je valide expérimentalement. 2) Comment identifier les GSU dans les données ? Cette identification est importante afin d'anticiper les mauvaises recommandations qui seront fournies à ces utilisateurs. Je propose des mesures numériques permettant d'identifier les GSU dans un jeu de données de recommandation sociale. Ces mesures sont significativement plus performantes que celles de l'état de l'art. Enfin, comment modéliser ces GSU pour améliorer la qualité des recommandations qui leurs sont fournies ? Je propose des méthodes inspirées du domaine de l'apprentissage automatique et dédiées à la modélisation des GSU permettant d'améliorer la qualité des recommandations qui leurs sont fournies / A recommender system aims at providing relevant resources to a user, named the active user. To allow this recommendation, the system exploits the information it has collected about the active user or about resources. The collaborative filtering (CF) is a widely used recommandation approach. The data exploited by CF are the preferences expressed by users on resources. CF is based on the assumption that preferences are consistent between users, allowing a user's preferences to be inferred from the preferences of other users. In a CF-based recommender system, at least one user community has to share the preferences of the active user to provide him with high quality recommendations. Let us define a specific preference as a preference that is not shared by any group of user. A user with several specific preferences will likely be poorly served by a classic CF approach. This is the problem of Grey Sheep Users (GSU). In this thesis, I focus on three separate questions. 1) What is a specific preference? I give an answer by proposing associated hypotheses that I validate experimentally. 2) How to identify GSU in preference data? This identification is important to anticipate the low quality recommendations that will be provided to these users. I propose numerical indicators to identify GSU in a social recommendation dataset. These indicators outperform those of the state of the art and allow to isolate users whose quality of recommendations is very low. 3) How can I model GSU to improve the quality of the recommendations they receive? I propose new recommendation approaches to allow GSU to benefit from the opinions of other users

Layout Decision Analysis and Design is a ubiquitous problem in a variety of work domains that is important from both strategic and operational perspectives. It is largely a complex, vague, difficult, and ill-structured problem that requires intelligent and sophisticated decision analysis and design support. <br /><br /> Inadequate information availability, combinatorial complexity, subjective and uncertain preferences, and cognitive biases of decision makers often hamper the procurement of a superior layout configuration. Consequently, it is desirable to develop an intelligent decision support system for layout design that could deal with such challenging issues by providing efficient and effective means of generating, analyzing, enumerating, ranking, and manipulating superior alternative layouts. <br ><br /> We present a research framework and a functional prototype for an interactive Intelligent System for Decision Support and Expert Analysis in Multi-Attribute Layout Optimization (IDEAL) based on soft computing tools. A fundamental issue in layout design is efficient production of superior alternatives through the incorporation of subjective and uncertain design preferences. Consequently, we have developed an efficient and Intelligent Layout Design Generator (ILG) using a generic two-dimensional bin-packing formulation that utilizes multiple preference weights furnished by a fuzzy Preference Inferencing Agent (PIA). The sub-cognitive, intuitive, multi-facet, and dynamic nature of design preferences indicates that an automated Preference Discovery Agent (PDA) could be an important component of such a system. A user-friendly, interactive, and effective User Interface is deemed critical for the success of the system. The effectiveness of the proposed solution paradigm and the implemented prototype is demonstrated through examples and cases. <br /><br /> This research framework and prototype contribute to the field of layout decision analysis and design by enabling explicit representation of experts? knowledge, formal modeling of fuzzy user preferences, and swift generation and manipulation of superior layout alternatives. Such efforts are expected to afford efficient procurement of superior outcomes and to facilitate cognitive, ergonomic, and economic efficiency of layout designers as well as future research in related areas. <br /><br /> Applications of this research are broad ranging including facilities layout design, VLSI circuit layout design, newspaper layout design, cutting and packing, adaptive user interfaces, dynamic memory allocation, multi-processor scheduling, metacomputing, etc.

Layout Decision Analysis and Design is a ubiquitous problem in a variety of work domains that is important from both strategic and operational perspectives. It is largely a complex, vague, difficult, and ill-structured problem that requires intelligent and sophisticated decision analysis and design support. <br /><br /> Inadequate information availability, combinatorial complexity, subjective and uncertain preferences, and cognitive biases of decision makers often hamper the procurement of a superior layout configuration. Consequently, it is desirable to develop an intelligent decision support system for layout design that could deal with such challenging issues by providing efficient and effective means of generating, analyzing, enumerating, ranking, and manipulating superior alternative layouts. <br ><br /> We present a research framework and a functional prototype for an interactive Intelligent System for Decision Support and Expert Analysis in Multi-Attribute Layout Optimization (IDEAL) based on soft computing tools. A fundamental issue in layout design is efficient production of superior alternatives through the incorporation of subjective and uncertain design preferences. Consequently, we have developed an efficient and Intelligent Layout Design Generator (ILG) using a generic two-dimensional bin-packing formulation that utilizes multiple preference weights furnished by a fuzzy Preference Inferencing Agent (PIA). The sub-cognitive, intuitive, multi-facet, and dynamic nature of design preferences indicates that an automated Preference Discovery Agent (PDA) could be an important component of such a system. A user-friendly, interactive, and effective User Interface is deemed critical for the success of the system. The effectiveness of the proposed solution paradigm and the implemented prototype is demonstrated through examples and cases. <br /><br /> This research framework and prototype contribute to the field of layout decision analysis and design by enabling explicit representation of experts? knowledge, formal modeling of fuzzy user preferences, and swift generation and manipulation of superior layout alternatives. Such efforts are expected to afford efficient procurement of superior outcomes and to facilitate cognitive, ergonomic, and economic efficiency of layout designers as well as future research in related areas. <br /><br /> Applications of this research are broad ranging including facilities layout design, VLSI circuit layout design, newspaper layout design, cutting and packing, adaptive user interfaces, dynamic memory allocation, multi-processor scheduling, metacomputing, etc.