Interactive Online Configurator via Boolean Satisfiability Modeling

Abstract

Manufacturing companies widely use interactive configurators to specify product variants. These variants are created from different combinations of individual components. Constraints are usually imposed as relations between components to rule out invalid product configurations. The configurator and its underlying algorithm ensure the product specified by the user satisfies all constraints. We provide a method that models the online configurator as a series of highly parallelizable boolean satisfiability problems (SAT). Our methodology is facilitated by state-of-the-art tools such as the Microsoft Z3 theorem prover. Additionally, we confirm that the configurator problem is NP-complete. Hence, using SAT solving is not only natural but canonical.