Conceptual Modeling for Con®guration of Mass-customizable Products

The development and maintenance of product con®guration systems is faced with increasing challenges caused by the growing complexity of the underlying knowledge bases. Effective knowledge acquisition is needed since the product and the corresponding con®guration system have to be developed in parallel. In this paper, we show how to employ a standard design language (Uni®ed Modeling Language, UML) for modeling con®guration knowledge bases. The two constituent parts of the con®guration model are the component model and a set of corresponding functional architectures de®ning which requirements can be imposed on the product. The conceptual con®guration model is automatically translated into an executable logic representation. Using this representation we show how to employ model-based diagnosis techniques for debugging faulty con®guration knowledge bases, detecting infeasible requirements, and for recon®guring old con®gurations.