Systematic Procedure for Optimization Problem Formulation

Figure 2 shows the 3-step procedure. In Step 1, the cosmetic formulation problem is defined where the desired product form, product attributes, and product specifications and properties are determined based on market study and product knowledge. In Step 2, potential ingredient candidates and relevant microstructural descriptors (if applicable) are generated to specify the design variables. Step 3 identifies a set of mechanistic models and surrogate models and converts heuristics into mathematical equations. For each step, the sources of the input are shown on the left and the outputs are on the right. The details are described below.