Knowledge-Based Configuration. From Research to Business Cases PDF
Preview Knowledge-Based Configuration. From Research to Business Cases
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
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