in conjunction with the 14th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence ECAI 2000
Configuration has recently attracted a lot of research and industrial interest. The research interest is witnessed by the high turnout to events such as the AAAI'99 Workshop on Configuration. The industrial interest is indicated by the increasing number of vendors of software tools for configuration, i.e. configurators. The importance of configuration has expanded as more companies use configurators to efficiently customize their products for individual customers.
However, efficient development and maintenance of configurators require sophisticated software development techniques. AI methods, more than ever, are central to developing powerful configuration tools and to extending the functionality of configurators. Configuration problems, like planning problems, can be seen on one hand as an interesting test-bed for novel AI techniques. On the other hand, configuration problems can serve as input for new research directions.
The goals of this workshop are to promote high-quality research in configuration and strengthen the interaction between industry and research. The workshop will be a two-day event. Paper and application report sessions are organized as panels according to topics with short introductory presentations by panel members, allowing ample time for discussion. The ECAI 2000 Workshop on Configuration is third in a series of international meetings on configuration that began at the 1996 AAAI Fall Symposium in Boston, USA, and continued in the AAAI'99 Configuration Workshop in Orlando, USA.
Configuration problems and models : classification of configuration problems; configuration knowledge representation and acquisition; debugging and validation of configuration knowledge bases; configurable software products; reconfiguration problems; optimality and optimization in configuration; spatial, layout and 3D configuration.
Methods for configuration: efficient problem solving methods and reasoning techniques for configuration; complexity of configuration tasks; generating explanations and restoring consistency; interactive or collaborative configuration and man-machine interaction.
Configurators and configurator utilization: problem solving methods and efficiency of implemented configurators; long term management of configuration knowledge; relation of configuration to software configuration management, product data management and other product knowledge and models.
Configuration and product design: modeling/using configuration knowledge and configurators in the design/development process; relations between configuration and design - design for configurability; utilization of configurators with PDM and CAD systems.
Configuration and production management: configuration for sale,
engineering, planning, scheduling, manufacturing, assembly, installation;
utilization of configurators with ERP software;
integration of configurators with internet and e-business.
We hope to attract a balance of
If you wish to participate, submit either a full paper of no more than 6 pages (or 6000 words), or a position statement or a short paper (at most 3 pages or 3000 words). Short papers may address an important problem for further research or describe a practical problem or an interesting lesson learned. In addition, we solicit proposals for short demonstrations (at most 3 pages or 3000 words, and software demonstrations taking at most 15 minutes), emphasizing the original contribution, functionality or conceptual foundation of the system.
The submissions should follow the ECAI 2000 style guide except for the blind reviewing and submission procedure instructions. Electronic submission to mst@dbai.tuwien.ac.at in postscript or PDF format is preferred. Otherwise, send three hard copies of your paper to the contact address given below, to arrive at the submission deadline.
Each submission is refereed by at least two members of the program committee. Refereeing criteria are relevance to workshop topics, significance and novelty of the research, technical content, discussion on relation to previous work and clarity of presentation. A contribution submitted as a long paper may be accepted as a short paper, if the program committee considers it to be inadequate for a long paper but to present an important issue.
The camera-ready version of the paper should also follow the ECAI style. It should be submitted, in electronic form as both a PDF and a PS file, to rudelst@dke.uni-linz.ac.at with a CC to mst@dbai.tuwien.ac.at, to arrive at the camera ready version deadline. Please include in the email the names of the authors that will participate in the workshop and the name of the author that will give the presentation.
The Configuration workshop will be co-ordinated with the "Planning and Configuration (PuK 2000) New results in planning, scheduling, and design" and the "AI in Product Data Management (AiPDM) Modelling and Reasoning about Product Data in e-Commerce and e-Business" workshops of ECAI 2000. Submissions to these workshops may be reassigned to a more suitable workshop jointly by the organizing committees. In addition, a joint session between the Configuration and "New results in planning, scheduling and design" workshops may be organized, if there are enough submissions of interest to both workshops.