[DL] CFP: IJCAI 2003: Workshop on Configuration

[Daniel Mailharro]

			   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 at ilog.fr
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 at ilog.fr

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