A framework for the development of personalized, distributed web-based configuration systems

For the last two decades, configuration systems relying on Artificial Intelligence techniques have been successfully applied in industrial environments. These systems support the configuration of complex products and services in shorter time with fewer errors and therefore reduce costs of a mass-customization business model. The EU-funded project CAWICOMS aims at the next generation of Web-based configuration applications that cope with two challenges of todays open, networked economy: The support for heterogeneous user groups in an open market environment and the integration of configurable sub-products provided by specialized suppliers. This paper describes the CAWICOMS Workbench for the development of configuration services offering personalized user interaction, as well as distributed configuration of products and services in a supply chain. The developed tools and techniques rely on a harmonized knowledge representation and knowledge acquisition mechanism, open XML-based protocols, and advanced personalization and distributed reasoning techniques. We exploited the workbench based on the real-world business scenario of distributed configuration of services in the domain of IP-based Virtual Private Networks.