A Novel Imperialist Competitive Algorithm for Scheme Configuration Rules Extraction of Product Service System

When designing a product service system scheme, the most critical issue is how to quickly and accurately translate customer value requirements into scheme technical characteristics. It is difficult to solve this problem by only the experience and knowledge of engineers. Effective configuration rules are necessary to assist engineers in scheme design. Therefore, this paper proposes a novel configuration rule extraction method based on a new imperialist competitive algorithm. Compared to traditional algorithms, the progressive Latin Hypercube Sampling method is introduced to improve the uneven distribution of empires in the search space caused by random, so as to expand the search scope of the algorithm. This algorithm introduces clonal evolution operator in competition process to reproduce the countries with strong influence. The clonal populations are randomly crossed and high-efficiency mutated to guide the algorithm forward in the optimal solution direction. Finally, the method is applied to the mining process of scheme configuration rules of NC machine tool product service system. The method has fast solving speed and can obtain high-quality rules. (C) 2019 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.