Description and Configuration of Complex Technical Products in a Virtual Store

The paper describes a representation formalism for the description of products and the associated reasoning mechanisms for the configuration of complex products in a virtual store where a customer (potentially non expert of the domain) has to be supported in the task of selecting and assembling a product. We present FPC, a conceptual formalism where both taxonomical and partonomical relationships can be modeled and complex constraints among components and sub-components can be described by means of a constraint language. Two inference mechanisms have been defined: hypothesis formulation for hypothesizing the set of complex products a set of components can be part of. Hypothesis validation verifies whether it is possible to build an instance of a complex product which includes all the components chosen by the customer by taking into account the taxonomy, the partonomy, the constraints among components as well as the user requirements. This mechanism is also able to point out which components have to be added in order to properly configuring the product. The paper discusses how the combination of hypothesis formulation and hypothesis validation can be used for supporting a customer in selecting and configuring a product. The domain of Personal Computers and their related components is used as a test bed of the system.