Method and system for automated generation of product configurations in a computer based manufacturing system

摘要

The method and system of the present invention may be employed to capture and utilize customer selected combinations of sales features and feature variants in a computer based manufacturing system. Nonconflicting combinations of sales features and variants are presented to a customer and are utilized to create an End Item Configuration list which lists those components and variations of components which are necessary to manufacture a configuration of a complex product which includes the customer selected features. Production features are indirectly selected by the utilization of key words during customer sales features selection. Upon the promotion of a customer quotation to the status of order, a contract configuration of the product bill of material is automatically created. A combination of a basic bill of material and a selected configuration list may be utilized to permit engineering changes to be supported and tracked by an identified configuration independent of engineering changes for other configurations.