A new support vector model-based imperialist competitive algorithm for time estimation in new product development projects

Time estimation in new product development (NPD) projects is often a complex problem due to its nonlinearity and the small quantity of data patterns. Support vector regression (SVR) based on statistical learning theory is introduced as a new neural network technique with maximum generalization ability. The SVR has been utilized to solve nonlinear regression problems successfully. However, the applicability of the SVR is highly affected due to the difficulty of selecting the SVR parameters appropriately. The imperialist competitive algorithm (ICA) as a socio-politically inspired optimization strategy is employed to solve the real world engineering problems. This optimization algorithm is inspired by competition mechanism among imperialists acid colonies, in contrast to evolutionary algorithms. This paper presents a new model integrating the SVR and the ICA for time estimation in NPD projects, in which ICA is used to tune the parameters of the SVR. A real data set from a case study of an NPD project in a manufacturing industry is presented to demonstrate the performance of the proposed model. In addition, the comparison is provided between the proposed model and conventional techniques, namely nonlinear regression, back-propagation neural networks (BPNN), pure SVR and general regression neural networks (GRNN). The experimental results indicate that the presented model achieves high estimation accuracy and leads to effective prediction. (c) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.