The configuration problem can be defined as the composition of a
complex product from a set of pre-defined component types while taking
into account a set of well-defined restrictions on how the component
types can be combined.
Important real-world industrial configuration
tasks are encountered in marketing, manufacturing, and design. They
usually involve physical products, but can also refer to financial or
other services or software. Due to their complexity,
these tasks must often be supported by dedicated software
tools (configurators). Efficient development and maintenance of
configurators require sophisticated software development
techniques.
AI methods are central to the development of powerful
configuration tools and to extending configurator functionality. A
wide range of AI techniques such as constraint satisfaction (and its
extensions), description logics, logic programming, and different
specialized problem solving methods are being used for this purpose.
Configuration, always a successful AI application area, has
recently attracted renewed research and industrial interest, as
demonstrated by the recent workshops on configuration at
AAAI'99, ECAI 2000, and IJCAI'01. With the rise of E-business and
web-based configuration services, the field presents many new and old
challenges to researchers and application developers.
The goal of this special issue is to demonstrate the state of the
art in configuration research. We invite submissions describing novel
research involving AI in configuration-related areas, including but
not limited to:
Configuration problems and models
Methods for computing configurations and supporting configuration tasks
Configurators and configurator utilization
Configuration and product design, product data management, and
production management
We hope to attract a balance of
- new and innovative papers on theoretical issues, justified by
practical concerns,
- practical applications applying a well-defined theory or model, and
- thorough case studies highlighting practical problems, needs and
experiences, especially long-term experience or new application
situations, e.g. in e-commerce.
Also welcome are articles that survey different approaches and thoroughly
analyze their differences and commonalities.
Papers will be anonymously
reviewed by at least two reviewers in order to select papers for
publication in the special issue. Quality papers that are not selected
may be considered for standard publication in AIEDAM.
Important dates:
REVISED
Submission deadline: 15th Mar 2002
Notification and reviews to authors: 7th July 2002
Revised version submission deadline: 15th Sep 2002
Papers needing re-reviews to reviewers: 16th Sep 2002
Re-reviews due: 6th Oct 2002
Final notification and re-reviews to all authors: 13th Oct 2002
Final version submission deadline: 30th Oct 2002
Final version DL to CUP: 6th Nov 2002
Further details about submission
etc. can be found at the special issue information page:
http://www.soberit.hut.fi/~tso/aiedamconfig/
Please direct enquiries to the guest editors at aiedamconfig@soberit.hut.fi
Guest editors:
Timo Soininen
Helsinki University of Technology
Software Business and Engineering Institute
POB 9600, FIN-02015 HUT, FINLAND
E-mail: Timo.Soininen@hut.fi
Markus Stumptner
University of South Australia, Adelaide
Advanced Computing Research Center
5095 Mawson Lakes SA, AUSTRALIA
E-mail: mst@cs.unisa.edu.au
