Patent ID: 8682817

Claim:
A method of analyzing solutions to a failure of a product, comprising: receiving input data relating to one or more current problems with the product occurring during development of the product; evaluating a fitness of solutions associated with a plurality of individuals in a population for the failure to generate a fitness evaluation, each of the plurality of individuals comprising a dominant genotype and a recessive genotype, wherein each genotype represents a solution for addressing a potential failure of the product, wherein a fitness function is applied to the dominant genotype of each individual, wherein the fitness function is configured to determine a confidence value for one or more of the solutions based on the input data relating to the one or more current problems with the product and historical data regarding the solutions stored in a database, wherein the historical data regarding the solutions is representative of at least one of whether the solutions were previously selected or rejected by a user and whether the solutions were successful or unsuccessful in addressing one or more previous problems, and wherein the confidence value for a solution represents an estimated likelihood of the solution successfully addressing the one or more current problems with the product; storing previously encountered genotypes in the recessive genotypes of the individuals; and determining a proposed solution for addressing the failure of the product based on the fitness evaluation.