Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support – Digital data processing system initialization or configuration
Reexamination Certificate
2000-05-16
2001-01-23
Butler, Dennis M. (Department: 2787)
Electrical computers and digital processing systems: support
Digital data processing system initialization or configuration
C713S100000, C700S097000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06178502
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to specifying customized complex device configurations for manufacture and, more particularly, to relating a specific configuration of complex units constructed with components with standardized interfaces to use characteristics of the complete unit.
2. Background Description
Determining the configuration of a mass customized unit to suit a particular customer can be divided into three steps. First is establishing what the customer wants and needs, then relating that to a specific configuration of the mass customized unit, and finally establishing that the configuration can be built. The problem solved by the subject invention is that of enabling the customers to work directly with terms and quantities of value to them while simultaneously producing a configuration of technical components suitable for manufacturing. The assumption of a mass customized unit implies that in the predominance of cases the actual customer derived configuration or one indistinguishably close to it can actually be built at no incremental cost.
Complex mass customized units can have a bewildering array of possible configurations. The number of distinct combinations for Motorola pager products is around 30 million and can be several billion for “simple” desk top personal computers (PCs). The configuration is the combination and arrangement of the standardized components that comprise the unit. In some cases, such as Burger King® Hamburgers, the components (pickles, lettuce, ketchup, etc.) represent choices based on customer evaluation of each component independently. More generally, the customer evaluation criteria will depend on combinations of the components making direct customer selection of the components problematic.
Customer criteria relate to a use or range of uses for which the unit must provide utility. These criteria are captured in the phrase “fitness for a particular use”. For example, PCs are used as basic communication units (e-mail/browser functions), game units (audio, 3-D visual intensive), office productivity units, and shared units providing file, print, and application services. A configuration tuned for one of these uses would contain, to a large extent, a set of components similar in type to that for other uses. The variation is in the relative “strength”, such as speed or capacity, of the individual components. The fitness for a particular use cannot be specified or determined through a single component, since it depends on all the components in the configuration.
Similar to the intuitive notion of “strength” for a particular component there will be an overall strength of a configuration ranging, for example, from “occasional home use” to “industrial strength” or from “economy” to “deluxe”. Moving to a stronger or weaker configuration, with its impact on price, may mean making wholesale changes to the components in a configuration. Both the fitness for a particular purpose and strength of a configuration for that purpose are subjective criteria that will vary over time. New uses and new components appear regularly and either increase the strength of components or units, or decrease the cost for a given strength.
Historically, the method for dealing with various uses of a unit is to create separate brands targeted at a broadly associated range of uses (or market segment) with a range of specific products within the brand. The range within a brand may vary over a small range of related uses or by unit strength. Reducing the selection to a series of fixed, specific products for the customer to choose from relies on the observation that markets naturally segment around a few points so that competing products can be compared. The market segments for compact, midrange, and luxury cars are an example. More subtly, it is also predicated on the presumed high cost of engineering a working product and of the lead time associated with offering such a product. In this product centric method a primary task of a marketing organization is prediction of customer requirements as input for product development.
The product centric method has two significant drawbacks. First is the obvious limitation of customer choice to a limited set of configurations. Customer wants and needs that vary from these configurations are either unsatisfied or satisfied through a costly special bid process replicating much of the original product development cycle. The second drawback appears when a customer or market segment develops requirements that fall between the recognized brands. Such requirements may occur in a dynamic market where segment shifts driven by both new uses and new technology may emerge rapidly compared to the product development cycle time. These drawbacks highlight the fact that customer needs are being force fit to a small set of discrete points within fixed boundaries.
An adaptation of the product centric method to allow greater flexibility is definition of “product families” consisting of a base product with optional substitutions or additions. While this addresses the customers' specific technical configuration needs (such as a larger direct access storage device (DASD), e.g. hard drive, than in the base product) it does not address the core need to describe the value of the change for satisfying the needs of a particular use.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is therefore an object of the present invention to provide a method for relating a specific configuration of complex units constructed from components with standardized interfaces to the user characteristics of the complete unit.
According to the invention, each component within a configuration is characterized by a “strength” parameter, and the set of components is arranged as a vector. This configuration vector can then be projected on a vector representing a standard use.
The invention represents possible unit configurations as a vector, the “configuration vector”, in a multi-dimensional space whose basis vectors (orthogonal dimensions) represent the set of available component types. Particular configuration vectors are characterized by a direction and a magnitude. The magnitude represents an overall “strength” of a configuration related to the performance or capacity of its individual components. The direction of a general configuration vector can be compared to the direction of a configuration tuned for a particular purpose or use. Similarly, a configuration can be constructed by scaling its magnitude along the direction defined by a tuned configuration and varying the direction to optimize among various uses. Decomposition of the vector so obtained into its basis vectors, i.e. its components, directly connects the use and strength of a configured unit with its physical configuration.
Most uses, and configuration vectors, will have zero strength for many components. Furthermore, some components may not contribute to any use. It is also assumed that a zero strength instances of every component exists so the optimum solution for some basic systems is to leave that component out. By gathering these components into an “up-sell” use and scaling it by the strength of the optimized or specified system under consideration by the customer, a set of appropriately matched options can be offered.
The primary advantage of this invention is that it provides a bidirectional mapping between a statement of value to the user through the computation of “fitness for a particular purpose” (or “use”) and a technical configuration. When coupled with price, the mapping can be made unique.
The customer can be presented with a system optimized for a particular use at a particular price point. Through presenting a range of systems around the optimum point and presenting the strength of the system for a variety of uses as the customer varies components, a wide range of customer choice is presented within an understandable range of choices.
From a technical perspective, the computation and presentation machinery is independent of any particular set of components. All
Caswell Nathan S.
Nigam Anil
Butler Dennis M.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Kaufman Stephen C.
McGuireWoods LLP
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