Knowledge-Based Configuration. From Research to Business Cases

341 Pages·2014·19.194 MB·English

by  Alexander Felfernig, Lothar Hotz, Claire Bagley and Juha Tiihonen (Auth.)

Knowledge-Based
Configuration
Knowledge-Based
Configuration
From Research to
Business Cases
Edited by
Alexander Felfernig
Lothar Hotz
Claire Bagley
Juha Tiihonen
AMSTERDAM • BOSTON • HEIDELBERG • LONDON
NEW YORK • OXFORD • PARIS • SAN DIEGO
SAN FRANCISCO • SINGAPORE • SYDNEY • TOKYO
Morgan Kaufmann is an imprint of Elsevier
Acquiring Editor: Meg Dunkerley
Editorial Project Manager: Heather Scherer
Project Manager: Punithavathy Govindaradjane
Designer: Matthew Limbert
Morgan Kaufmann is an imprint of Elsevier
225 Wyman Street, Waltham, MA 02451, USA
Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechani-
cal, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publisher. Details on how to seek permission, further information about the Publisher’s permis-
sions policies and our arrangements with organizations such as the Copyright Clearance Center and the Copyright
Licensing Agency, can be found at our website: www.elsevier.com/permissions.
This book and the individual contributions contained in it are protected under copyright by the Publisher (other
than as may be noted herein).
Notices
Knowledge and best practice in this field are constantly changing. As new research and experience broaden our
understanding, changes in research methods, professional practices, or medical treatment may become necessary.
Practitioners and researchers must always rely on their own experience and knowledge in evaluating and using any
information, methods, compounds, or experiments described herein. In using such information or methods they
should be mindful of their own safety and the safety of others, including parties for whom they have a professional
responsibility.
To the fullest extent of the law, neither the Publisher nor the authors, contributors, or editors, assume any liability
for any injury and/or damage to persons or property as a matter of products liability, negligence or otherwise, or
from any use or operation of any methods, products, instructions, or ideas contained in the material herein.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Knowledge-based configuration from research to business cases / edited by Alexander Felfernig, Lothar Hotz,
Claire Bagley, Juha Tiihonen.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-12-415817-7 (alk. paper)
1. Expert systems (Computer science) I. Felfernig, Alexander, editor of compilation.
QA76.76.E95K555442 2014
006.3’3--dc23
2013043355
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN: 978-0-12-415817-7
Printed and bound in the United States of America
14 15 16 17 18 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For information on all MK publications visit our website at www.mkp.com
Acknowledgments
We want to thank all the reviewers who helped to make this book a high-quality contribution to field of
knowledge-based configuration. We would like to especially thank Michel Aldanondo and Albert Haag
for their efforts in reviewing this book.
Alexander Felfernig, Lothar Hotz, Claire Bagley, and Juha Tiihonen
xiii
About the Editors
Alexander Felfernig has been a full professor at the Graz University of Technology (Austria) since
March 2009; he received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Klagenfurt. Currently,
he directs the Applied Software Engineering (ASE) research group at the Institute of Software
Technology. His research interests include configuration systems, recommender systems, model-
based diagnosis, software requirements engineering, different aspects of human decision-making, and
knowledge acquisition methods. Alexander Felfernig has published numerous papers in renowned
international conferences and journals (e.g., AI Magazine, Artificial Intelligence, IEEE Transactions
on Engineering Management, IEEE Intelligent Systems, Journal of Electronic Commerce) and is a co-
author of the book Recommender Systems, published by Cambridge University Press. He also acted as
an organizer of international conferences and workshops such as the ACM International Conference on
Recommender Systems and the International Symposium on Methodologies for Intelligent Systems.
Currently, he is a member of the Editorial Board of Applied Intelligence and the Journal of Intelligent
Information Systems.
Lothar Hotz is a senior researcher at the Hamburg Informatics Technology Center (HITeC e.V.)
located at the University of Hamburg, Germany; he received his PhD in Computer Science from the
University of Hamburg. He has participated in several national and European projects related to topics
of configuration, knowledge representation, constraints, diagnosis, scene interpretation, requirements
engineering, parallel processing, syntactic and semantic search, and object-oriented programming lan-
guages. Lothar has published numerous scientific papers about these topics. Besides other books, he
is co-author of Configuration in Industrial Product Families, published by IOS Press. Lothar is fur-
thermore active in the German national knowledge-based configuration community (PuK) and in the
international knowledge-based configuration community.
Claire Bagley has been the Director of the Oracle Advanced Constraint Technology (ACT) organization
since June 2009. She manages the research and development of the Oracle ACT product, which sup-
plies constraint solutions for Oracle applications. In addition, she is the author or co-author of numer-
ous patents in Constraint Programming and in the Configuration application domain. Her research and
development interests include configuration systems, planning and scheduling systems, as well as all
application domains that may benefit from constraint programming and mathematical programming
solutions. Claire also acts as an organizer and committee member in international conferences includ-
ing The European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI), The International Joint Conferences
on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), The International Conference on Integration of Artificial Intelligence
(AI) and Operations Research (OR) Techniques in Constraint Programming, and The International
Conference on Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming.
Juha Tiihonen is a researcher at Aalto University, School of Science. His research interests include
product and service configuration in various forms, including modeling, configurators, operations man-
agement aspects of business processes based on product and service configuration, design for configu-
ration, and recommendation of configurable offerings. He has published numerous articles on these
subjects, and he is an active member of the scientific community of knowledge-based configuration.
xv
xvi About the Editors
Additional research interests stem from supporting service business of equipment suppliers based on
advanced utilization of information about their service base that includes both their and their competi-
tor’s product individuals. What are key decisions in the context of services such as “full service” or
“operate and maintain”? What information is required and how do we get it? How do we model that
information? How do we process it into actionable form?
List of Contributors
Andreas Anderson
Variantum, Espoo, Finland
Claire Bagley
Oracle Corporation, Burlington, MA, USA
Morten H. Bennick
FLSmidth, Copenhagen, Denmark
Paul Blazek
cyLEDGE, Vienna, Austria
Sanja Boltek
Kapsch Carrier Com, Vienna, Austria
Andreas Falkner
Siemens AG Österreich, Vienna, Austria
Alexander Felfernig
Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Gerhard Friedrich
Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
Paul Grünbacher
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
Andreas Günter
HITeC e.V., University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Albert Haag
SAP AG, Walldorf, Germany
Alois Haselböck
Siemens AG, Vienna, Austria
Mikko Heiskala
Aalto University, Aalto, Finland
Harald Hofbauer
Kapsch Carrier Com, Vienna, Austria
Lothar Hotz
HITeC e.V., University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Björn Höfling
encoway, Bremen, Germany
xvii
xviii List of Contributors
Dietmar Jannach
Dortmund University of Technology, Dortmund, Germany
Michael Jeran
Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Thorsten Krebs
encoway GmBH, Bremen, Germany
Martin Lehofer
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies, Linz, Austria
Gerhard Leitner
Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
Monika Mandl
Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Wolfgang Mayer
University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia
Tomi Männistö
Aalto University, Aalto, Finland
Iulia Nica
Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Gerald Ninaus
Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Roland Ochenbauer
Kapsch Business Com, Vienna, Austria
Klas Orsvärn
Tacton, Stockholm, Sweden
Frank T. Piller
RWTH Aachen, Aachen, Germany
Rick Rabiser
Johannes Kepler University Linz, Linz, Austria
Florian Reinfrank
Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Stefan Reiterer
SelectionArts, Graz, Austria
Anna Ryabokon
Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
List of Contributors xix
Gottfried Schenner
Siemens AG, Vienna, Austria
Christian Schober
Kapsch Business Com, Vienna, Austria
Herwig Schreiner
Siemens AG Österreich, Vienna, Austria
Markus Stumptner
University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia
Erich Teppan
Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
Juha Tiihonen
Aalto University, Aalto, Finland
Michael Vierhauser
Siemens VAI Metals Technologies, Linz, Austria
Katharina Wolter
HITeC e.V., University of Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany
Lois Wortley
Oracle Corporation, Burlington, MA, USA
Franz Wotawa
Graz University of Technology, Graz, Austria
Markus Zanker
Alpen-Adria Universität Klagenfurt, Klagenfurt, Austria
Foreword
Industrialization brought us the ability to efficiently produce the same products. However, some types
of businesses are not well served by delivering the same product to all customers. Manufacturers try to
address this problem by creating a fixed set of product variants that contain a predefined set of options
in the hope that one of these variants might suit customer needs. Unfortunately, for highly variant prod-
ucts, this strategy does not provide a suitably close match to satisfy individual customer needs. To allow
for individual customization, configuration systems first were applied to complex industrial products
such as trucks and high-end computer systems. International Harvester in the 1960s implemented in
Assembly language one of the first computerized support systems for configuration of trucks. Digital
Equipment Corporation (DEC) fielded the first rule-based configuration expert system R1 in 1978 and
XCON in 1980 for ordering and configuring VAX computers, saving DEC millions of dollars each year.
These systems were used by experienced sales people who helped to place an order for a customer.
Broad acceptance of the Internet created a tremendous push for configuration systems. It opened up
direct consumer access to configuration systems, making them applicable for highly variant consumer
products. PC manufacturers were one of the first to jump on this bandwagon, offering custom ordering
capabilities for their PCs via the Internet. Now we live in the age of mass customization where com-
panies find value in providing customers with the ability to custom-tailor products while keeping the
prices in line with the mass produced products. Configuration systems play a central role in the continu-
ing trend of mass customization that affects an ever-increasing number of products.
Bill Paseman, founder of Calico Commerce, an early pioneer startup in the configuration field,
introduced me to what could be one of the best made cases for providing configuration systems: a
diner scene from the movie ‘‘Five Easy Pieces,’’ where Jack Nicolson is trying to order a ‘‘customized’’
chicken-salad sandwich in a restaurant. You can easily find the scene on YouTube. It provides an enter-
taining example of a user experience without configuration capabilities.
Configuration spans a broad spectrum of tasks from simple product options selection for a custom
athletic shoe to configuring an airplane. After all, an airplane is just one million parts flying in close
formation. All of us encounter configuration problems in one way or another in our lives. If you bought
a car, you probably dealt with it at some level already, knowingly or unknowingly. Companies that
implement configuration systems well provide great experiences for their customers while solving
daunting tasks on the back end where technical and business logistics capabilities are integrated. For
more complex products configuration requires technical innovation and extensive re-engineering of a
company’s internal business processes.
I discovered configuration problems in 1985, working at Xerox PARC, while still finishing research
on my PhD thesis in Stanford’s AI Lab. Xerox had just entered the PC business and was selling them
via a sales force accustomed to selling copiers. All PC options and some compatibility rules were
captured on pieces of paper that were provided to the sales people. Forty percent of the orders that
were placed had some sort of error that precluded delivering a working PC to a customer. Most expert
configuration systems built at that time were rule-based. Unfortunately, large rule-based systems were
fairly difficult to maintain since all knowledge was represented using production rules. We started to
research a ‘‘better,’’ more maintainable technology for delivering configuration systems that would
help with the Xerox PC ordering problem. The result was the development of the Cossack system, one
of the early model-based configurators providing a separation between domain knowledge, problem
xxi