Data processing: generic control systems or specific application – Specific application – apparatus or process – Product assembly or manufacturing
Reexamination Certificate
1997-12-29
2001-08-07
Gordon, Paul P. (Department: 2121)
Data processing: generic control systems or specific application
Specific application, apparatus or process
Product assembly or manufacturing
C700S097000, C700S104000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06272390
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to the solving of configuration problems by means of a computer acting as a configuration aid for either a salesperson or the customer himself. E.g. configuring a car, i.e. choosing a specific combination of engine, paint, accessories, etc. or e.g. configuring a computer system comprising different kinds of CPU's, discs, monitors, communication units, etc. will typically result in a huge and very complicated problem because of a great number of choices to be made and an overwhelming system of constraints between the different elements to be decided on.
A computer system intended to solve a configuration problem is a special application of artificial intelligence where the problem can be stated in terms of a set of selectable elements (e.g. engines, colours . . . ) and a number of relations (constraints) between these selectable elements (e.g. convertible only available in the colour Monte Carlo yellow).
In the following a selectable element is anything that can be included or excluded in a configuration. It can be a physical object (e.g. a car or a computer system as mentioned), an attribute (e.g. the colour red or the texture pattern of a carpet) or something abstract (e.g. a specific number of trips between home and work or a particular type of contracts).
Typically, selections are constrained by previous choices of elements. If for instance a shopper in a supermarket wants only to buy ecological products he may not be able to buy coffee. Thus, when selecting parts or features in a configuration system there should never be any available selections which are in fact invalid. This might seem very easy but is in fact one of the main difficulties in interactive configuration systems, as will be understood more fully from the following description.
The shopper from before could choose not to buy only ecological products. He may also choose not to buy coffee even if it is available.
An interactive computer configuration system is an aid for the salesperson or the customer to make it just as easy to grasp and configure a huge configuration problem as it is for a customer in the supermarket to know himself that he has bought exactly what he needs to treat his dinner guests according to his own decisions, and the expectations of the guests and the information supplied by the supermarket such as display of key figures, descriptions, graphics and video which change according to the customer's current focus and history.
PRIOR ART
Interactive configuration systems comprise a configuration model defining mutual predefined relations (constraints) between selectable elements and comprise programs for validating a set of choices against said configuration model.
Batch mode configuration systems are known, but only interactive systems are of interest where the user can make choices successively, and each time a choice is made obtain an answer from the configuration system. The answer may be an accept of the user's choice. It may also be other deduced consequences, or the answer could be a rejection of the choice made by the user because the inference engine finds out that the last choice made corresponds to a configuration instance which is invalid. If the user wants to insist on the last choice made, he has really got problems if he works with the prior art systems, as will be explained below.
One attempt to solve the problem is that the user, without help from the system, must undo a number of previously made choices. A method would be first to delete the last but one choice and thereafter the last choice but two, etc. This is not a useful method, because the user might have made e.g. 50 choices and he has no guarantee that he will not have to go back to one of the first choices made in order to obtain allowance of the last choice he made and which he really wants.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,515,524, issued May 7, 1996, describes a configuration system which does not solve the problem mentioned above but only suggests that some removal of previous choices must be done.
Another method would be to allow the user to violate some of the constraints and thereby “walk outside the valid configuration space” for some time and hope that it is possible to get in again, even if it is most likely that the user will find himself trapped. There is no guarantee that the user will come back into the valid configuration space, and furthermore the changes which the user may attempt to do will after a couple of attempts not even correlate with his needs.
Reference can also be made to: A Tool for Developing Interactive Configuration Applications by Tomas Axling and Seif Haridi, The Journal of Logic Programming 1994:19, 20:1-679, page 19. This method proposes to solve the problem by extending the configuration model with information telling what to do in case the user insists on a choice which results in an invalid configuration instance. It is an enormous task to take just the most possible situation into account, and this prior art also teaches that situations leading to these problems should be avoided.
It will therefore be understood that there is a great need for solving the problems arising when the user insists on a choice which, together with the choices made so far, correspond, to an invalid configuration instance.
CROSS REFERENCES
A reference is made to the following patent applications, filed on the same day as this application and assigned to the same assignee, Beologic A/S:
(1) A Method of Configuring a Set of Objects in a Computer
(2) A Method and Apparatus for Inference of Partial Knowledge in Interactive Configuration
(3) Method of Processing a Request to a Boolean Rule
(4) Interactive Configuration via Network which are hereby incorporated as references to be understood in connection with the present invention.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The object of the invention is to provide an interactive computer configuration system which allows interactive selection with immediate removal of invalid selections and addition of derived selections made by the system.
A further object is to provide a sales-aid-system enabling the user not only to make choices but also to undo choices according to relevant alternatives presented to him by the interactive configuration computer system.
A further object is to provide a sales configuration system where alternatives proposed by the system for undoing of a choice can not only be neglected by the user, but it is also possible for the user to make a cardinal selection so that relevant alternatives presented thereafter will prioritize the customer's requirements and render a valid configuration easy and quick.
A further object is to implement the above-mentioned features in a very efficient way tailored to the special ability of a computer to make logical operations.
According to the invention a method is provided for interactive configuration wherein the user makes choices of elements, the validity of which is confirmed successively by means of a configuration engine system comprising a configuration model defining mutual predefined relations between selectable elements and comprising programs for validating a set of choices against said configuration model, and wherein a contradiction between a preferred choice made by the user a nd a number of predetermined valid configuration instances established by the inference engine system occurs, the improvement being that an alternative investigation system is activated for providing to the user a number of system generated user relevant possibilities of undoing previous choices, thereby obtaining for each possible set of undoing of choices a respective valid configuration instance comprising said preferred choice.
The time taken to complete a product configuration is significantly reduced by providing relevant proposals for alternatives automatically. This ensures that the sales person will not end up in a situation where he cannot propose a solution to the customer. The customer's requests are given without a preference, and they are often logically confli
Beologic A/S
Gordon Paul P.
Oliff & Berridg,e PLC
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