A design of product configuration manager based on weight constraint parameter value in manufacture

The configuration problem in manufacture is more complicated than most other fields. Therefore, the design of modeling and reasoning module for product configuration manager in manufacture is very important and complex. It is just what is mainly discussed in this paper. A framework of PCM in manufacture is put forward according to the expert system theories, and a series of formalized knowledge representations and a data-driven graph control strategy for the PCM are provided. In the knowledge representations, the weight constraint is defined to distinguish the origins of the parameter value. It can be used to simplify the consistency check and effectivity check of the parameter. Furthermore, the search space of the configuration problem can be also easily compressed. The control strategy strengthens the real-time interaction between the user and the PCM so as to decompose the reasoning process. The reasoning process of the control strategy is described in detail by the configuration reasoning graph which is defined in this paper.