ISBN: | 978-5-5138-4009-1 |
High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Knowledge-based configuration (of complex products and services) has a long history as an Artificial Intelligence application area, see, e.g.,,,,,,,. Informally, configuration can be defined as a "special case of design activity, where the artifact being configured is assembled from instances of a fixed set of well-defined component types which can be composed conforming to a set of constraints" . Such constraints are representing technical restrictions, restrictions related to economic aspects and conditions related to production processes. The result of a configuration process is a product configuration (concrete configuration), i.e., a list of instances and in some cases also connections between these instances. Examples of such configurations are computers to be delivered or financial service portfolio offers (e.g., a combination of loan and corresponding risk insurance).