Information for decision-making is ubiquitous: Revisiting the reverse engineering mode in breadmaking technology

Abstract

Abstract-This paper deals with the process of decision making in the reverse engineering mode and highlights the need for polyvalent information. Three aspects are considered. 1) Reverse engineering implies a preliminary assumption: having defined a desired outcome of the decision process. Defining goals on the possible outcomes is a complex, multi-actor process based on ubiquitous information. Once identified at best, several alternative scenarios may lead to the desired outcome. The first issue consists in evaluating these alternative scenarios. 2) While taking into consideration the positive consequences that the different alternatives will generate, the decision process has to allow for possible negative impacts, which are not explicitly expressed in the defined goals. We thus consider the reverse engineering process has to be bipolar and take rejections into account. 3) Finally, the simultaneous achievement (respectively, avoidance) of several goals (respectively, rejections) is not always possible and depends, in particular, on whether the actions leading to each of these goals (respectively avoiding these rejections) are compatible or not. We thus seek the "best" compatible set of actions and propose to define it as optimizing the bipolar preferences expressed on the outcomes. The approach is both graphical and logical and is focused on a case study in breadmaking technology.

Multi-Criteria Reverse Engineering for Food: Genesis and Ongoing Advances

“…One challenge is to identify and exploit all the key information-and only the key information-from the mass of data available. Today, the value of information comes not from its scarcity but from how it can be contextualized, managed, and integrated into a system to make it available with the relevant features at the right time and the right place [11,12].…”

“…Using various raw materials that undergo numerous processes led to the production of a given product having certain criteria (direct impact, black arrows). MRE is needed to define the processes and/ or raw materials necessary to obtain a product having the defined criteria (reverse impact, red arrows) desired products and it is up to the supply to adapt and find its ways to respond, can be considered as a way forward [2,11].…”

“…While taking into consideration the positive consequences that the different alternatives will generate, decisions also have to account for possible negative impacts, which are not explicitly expressed in the defined goals. Several examples of such goals, alternatives, and positive/negative consequences are provided on the best technological choices in breadmaking [11,15]. For instance, the choice of whole wheat products is beneficial from a nutritional standpoint due to the micronutrients and the fibers they provide, but it also implies an increased risk of contamination by pesticides and other contaminants.…”

Multidimensional Analysis Through Argumentation?

“…In [11], the relevance of the argumentative approach was highlighted regarding cognitive considerations. Recently, several works proved its relevance in social-related concerns, food systems, chains, policies and controversies [2,4,[8][9][10][11]. In the present paper, we revisit argumentation systems to question the meaning of basic notions in a concrete case: What does an extension mean practically?…”

A practical application approach to argumentation for multicriteria analysis and decision support

“…Historically, the prototypical application field of argumentation in computer science was the legal domain [24]. More recently, several works proved its relevance in a larger context, in social-related concerns, medicine, food systems, chains, policies and controversies, especially for decision-making purposes [13,10,28,29,33].…”