Knowledge-based configuration
AI customization approach
Knowledge-based configuration, also referred to as product configuration or product customization, is an activity of customising a product to meet the needs of a particular customer. The product in question may consist of mechanical parts, services, and software. Knowledge-based configuration is a major application area for artificial intelligence (AI), and it is based on modelling of the configurations in a manner that allows the utilisation of AI techniques for searching for a valid configuration to meet the needs of a particular customer.
Background
Knowledge-based configuration (of complex products and services) has a long history as an artificial intelligence application area, see, e.g. Informally, configuration can be defined as a "special case of design activity, where the artifact being configured is assembled from instances of a fixed set of well-defined component types which can be composed conforming to a set of constraints". Such constraints represent technical restrictions, restrictions related to economic aspects, and conditions related to production processes. The result of a configuration process is a product configuration (concrete configuration), i.e., a list of instances and in some cases also connections between these instances. Examples of such configurations are computers to be delivered or financial service portfolio offers (e.g., a combination of loan and corresponding risk insurance).
Theory and complexity of configuration
Numerous practical configuration problems can be analyzed by the theoretical framework of Najmann and Stein, an early axiomatic approach that does not presuppose any particular knowledge representation formalism. One important result of this methodology is that typical optimization problems (e.g.
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This entry incorporates text from “Knowledge-based configuration” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.