Since introduced by Vining and Myers in 1990, the concept of dual response approach based on response surface methodology has widely been investigated and adopted for the purpose of robust design. Separately estimating mean and variance responses, dual response approach may take advantages of optimization modeling for finding optimum settings of input factors. Explicitly assuming functional relationship between responses and input factors, however, it may not work well enough especially when the behavior of responses are poorly represented. A sufficient number of experimentations are required to improve the precision of estimations. This study proposes an alternative to dual response approach in which additional experiments are not required. An artificial neural network has been applied to model relationships between responses and input factors. Mean and variance responses correspond to output nodes while input factors are used for input nodes. Training, validating, and testing a neural network with empirical process data, an artificial data based on the neural network may be generated and used to estimate response functions without performing real experimentations. A drug formulation example from pharmaceutical industry has been investigated to demonstrate the procedures and applicability of the proposed approach.

Prediction of process parameters is very important in parameter design. If predictions are fairly accurate, the quality improvement process will be useful to save time and reduce cost. The concept of dual response approach based on response surface methodology has widely been investigated. Dual response approach may take advantages of optimization modeling for finding optimum setting of input factor by separately modeling mean and variance responses. This study proposes an alternative dual response approach based on machine learning techniques instead of statistical analysis tools. A hybrid neural network-genetic algorithm has been proposed for the purpose of parameter design. A neural network is first constructed to model the relationship between responses and input factors. Mean and variance responses correspond to output nodes while input factors are used for input nodes. Using empirical process data, process parameters can be predicted without performing real experimentations. A genetic algorithm is then applied to find the optimum settings of input factors, where the neural network is used to evaluate the mean and variance response. A drug formulation example from pharmaceutical industry has been studied to demonstrate the procedures and applicability of the proposed approach.