Modelling of Product Configuration Design and Management by Using Product Structure Knowledge

Abstract

For whole life cycle of product development, configuration can be considered from two aspects: configuration design which is the activity of creating configuration solutions, and configuration management which is the process of maintaining a consistent configuration under change. Both configuration design and configuration management are complex processes for many products, particularly when the product structure is complex in terms of a large number of elements with different relationships, the configuration problem will be significant.This paper presents an AI-based system to support configuration design and management. The contribution is of a system which models product configuration knowledge, and uses a Reason Maintenance System as an inference engine to assist the designer to create a product structure in terms of configuration solution. At the same time, the configuration consistency is maintained by the inference engine.Keywordsconfiguration design and managementproduct structuresreason maintenance mechanismlogic-based truth maintenance systemconstraint-based reasoning.