IJCAI 2003: Workshop on Configuration

                           IJCAI 2003
                     CONFIGURATION WORKSHOP
                     Call for participation

              in conjunction with the 18th IJCAI
                  August 11, Acapulco, Mexico
   

- Introduction
- Topics
- Attendance and Submission Information
- Important Dates
- Web pages
- Organizing Commitee
- Program Commitee

   
INTRODUCTION

Representing and solving Configuration problems have always been subjects of
interest for applying and developing AI techniques because powerful knowledge-
representation models are necessary to capture the great variety and complexity
of configurable product models, and efficient reasoning methods are required
to provide intelligent interactive behavior in configurator software, such as 
solution search, satisfaction of user preferences, optimization, diagnosis, 
etc.

Today, the number, the diversity and the complexity of configurable products
available on the market is growing, expanding from conventional equipment 
configuration to software configuration, or to service configuration, such as
loans, insurance, travel packages, and so forth.
Configuration is more than ever a challenging area for applying novel
AI techniques since more and more sophisticated reasoning tasks are delegated 
to the configurator software; the software must thus integrate product-assembly
knowledge along with customer classification, adaptive sales strategies, and
customer assistance. This integration becomes particularly critical for 
e-business applications where customers directly configure products through 
the Web with no human assistance and without a deep knowledge of the products 
they are buying.

This workshop continues the series of Configuration workshops started at the 
AAAI 1996 Fall Symposium and continued at AAAI'99, ECAI 2000, IJCAI 2001 and 
ECAI 2002. The previous workshops were particularly successful 
since they had each more than 40 participants representing academia, end users
and the major configurator vendors.

The workshop gives AI researchers from different areas (e.g. description 
logics, 
constraint satisfaction, nonmonotonic reasoning, logic programs, case-based 
reasoning, 
ontologies, planning), real-application developers, and industrial configurator 
vendors 
the opportunity to exchange needs, ideas, work, methods, experiments, 
use-cases, and 
benchmarks related to the various problems met by configuration applications: 
theory, 
knowledge representation, reasoning, optimization, diagnosis, solution repair, 
interactivity, ontology, cooperative processes, etc.

The goal of this IJCAI workshop on configuration is to promote high-quality 
research 
in configuration and to strengthen the interaction between industry and 
research. 
The workshop is intended for researchers and product developers interested in 
this area 
and more generally in the application of AI techniques to real problems and the 
research fostered by it. Submissions are sought from the researchers and 
developers
working with the wide range of applicable AI technologies that complement each 
other.

The workshop will be a one day event. Accepted submissions are organized as 
panels 
according to topics with short introductory presentations by panel members, 
allowing 
ample time for discussion to stimulate a workshop-like event.


TOPICS

We invite submissions describing novel and previously unpublished research
(possibly in progress) or experiences with AI in configuration-related
areas, including but not limited to:

1) Configuration problems and models:
- Configuration problems typology 
- Knowledge representation & acquisition 
- fuzzy and incomplete knowledge
- Knowledge base validation, diagnosis
- Interaction with Product Data Management systems
- Standardization of catalog exchange format

2) Reasoning methods
- Constraint Satisfaction Problems and its extensions
- Preference based reasoning
- Descriptive logics, Rules, Case-based reasoning
- Local search, Genetic algorithms, Neural networks 
- Problem decomposition
- Optimization
- Multi-criteria optimization
- Symmetry breaking
- Cooperative configuration processes
- Re-configuration of existing systems
- Explanations
- Bench mark proposals

3) Interactivity & e-business
- Personalization
- Ontology
- Intelligent man machine interaction
- Machine learning
- Client/Server architecture, Configuration server
- Configuration Web service
- Distributed configurators

4) Integration with other modules
- Product Data Management
- CAD
- Pricer
- ERP, Process configuration

5) Applications & Tools
- Application reports
- Case studies
- Real world challenges

We hope to attract a balance of 
 - new and innovative papers on theoretical issues, justified by practical 
concerns, 
 - practical applications, preferably applying a well-defined theory or model,
 - thorough case studies highlighting practical problems, needs and 
experiences, 
   especially long-term experiences and new cases in e.g. e-commerce 
applications. 

In addition, we solicit papers containing a description of a configuration 
problem 
instance together with longer complete description. The longer descriptions 
will be 
made available on a web-site in order to build up a benchmark test base for 
configuration
systems.


ATTENDANCE and SUBMISSION INFORMATION

All workshop participants must register to the IJCAI-2003 conference, which 
also 
handles the practical arrangements such as workshop registration, location, etc.
Participation will be by invitation only, and will be limited to 40 
participants.

If you wish to participate, submit either a full paper of no more than 6 pages 
(or 6000 words), or a position statement, a short paper, or a problem instance 
(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. 

If a short paper describes a problem instance, it can do this using natural 
language or 
any suitable formalism, in addition to giving details such as the source and 
domain 
(e.g. computer, car or telecommunications industry, possibly name of the 
company and 
product) of the problem, the possible system(s) used for solving it, 
performance data 
for the system(s), general characteristics such as the potential search space 
vs. the 
number of correct configurations or suitable configurations with respect to 
some 
requirements, and modeling method specific characteristics such as number of 
variables 
and the sizes of their domains for a CSP representation. However, the authors 
are strongly 
encouraged to formulate their descriptions based on the generally used 
concepts: components,
attributes, ports and connections, resources, and functions (features). If 
necessary to 
preserve confidential information, you may rename the elements of the 
problem description to meaningless symbols to hide their origin and omit the 
names of 
the company and product. The problem instances should also be accompanied with 
a longer, 
possibly more detailed description file of the problem. The longer description 
should 
contain the same information as the shorter version in addition to giving a 
more detailed 
model and comments on the meaning and relation between different parts of model 
to make it 
accessible to other researchers willing to try their system on it. These 
descriptions 
will be made available on the web in the form of a benchmark test set for 
configurators, 
and by submitting such a problem description the authors give permission to 
publish it on 
the web. 

The submissions should follow the IJCAI-2003 style guide (when it becomes 
available) and 
guidelines pertaining to blind reviewing. Electronic submission to 
dmailharro-cgl8wYLtz1o@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
in both postscript and PDF format is preferred, i.e. submit two distinct 
pieces, one 
containing the paper without author identification, the other containing the 
title page 
with author identification, and both in both PS and  PDF formats, altogether 
four files.
Otherwise, send three hard copies of your paper and the title page to the 
contact address 
given below, to arrive at the submission deadline. No tracking numbers or 
declarations on 
submissions to other forums are needed. 

Each submission is blindly 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 in 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. 

IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline: April 4, 2003 
Reviews due : April 30, 2003
Notification of acceptance: May 5, 2003
Camera-ready version deadline: May 23, 2003
Workshop: August 11, 2003


WEB PAGES:
  IJCAI:    http://www.ijcai-03.org
  Workshop: http://www2.ilog.com/ijcai-03


ORGANIZING COMMITTEE:

Chair and contact person: Daniel Mailharro. ILOG S.A., 
                          9 rue de Verdun, 94253 Gentilly Cedex, France.
                          Tel: +33 1 49 08 35 70, Fax: +33 1 49 08 35 10
                          E-mail: dmailharro-cgl8wYLtz1o@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Prof. Michel Aldanondo.  Ecole des Mines d'Albi Carmaux, France
Prof. Eugene Freuder.    University College Cork, Ireland
Prof. Gerhard Friedrich. University Klagenfurt, Austria
Dr.   Ulrich Junker.     ILOG S.A., France
Prof. Timo Soininen.     Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Prof. Markus Stumptner.  University of South Australia, Australia

PROGRAM COMMITTEE:

Michel Aldanondo, Ecole des Mines d'Albi Carmaux, France 
Claire Bagley, Oracle, USA
Ronen I.Brafman, University of Beer-Sheva, Israel
David Brown, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, USA 
Boi Faltings, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland 
Alexander Felfernig, University Klagenfurt, Austria
Cipriano Forza, Universita di Padova, Italy
David Franke, Trilogy, USA 
Felix Frayman, Felix Frayman Consulting, USA
Esther Gelle, ABB Corporate Research Ltd., Switzerland 
Albert Haag, SAP AG, Germany 
Dietmar Jannach, University Klagenfurt, Austria
Ulrich Junker, ILOG S.A., France 
Daniel Mailharro, ILOG S.A., France 
Tomi Männistö, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland 
Klas Orsvärn, Tacton AB, Sweden 
Barry O'Sullivan, University College Cork, Ireland
Carsten Sinz, University of Tubingen,  Germany
Timo Soininen, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland
Markus Stumptner, Technische Universität Wien, Austria 
Pietro Torasso, Universita di Torino, Italy
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