Improving product configurator by the use of ontology and Slow Intelligence system approach

The ability to create customized product configurations fulfilling user's needs is a major aim sought by many companies, especially the design and implementation of web-based services that allows users to create and customize in a simple and intuitive way a desired product. To define a common vocabulary that opens possibilities such as the ability to express customer requirements correctly and to exchange knowledge, a popular approach uses ontological formalisms. This paper presents an ontology-based configurator system that maximally satisfies user's needs starting from the desired requirements, the available components, the context information and previous similar configurations. The process by which the system finds the candidate configuration follows an approach known as Slow Intelligence (SI). This paper presents the proposed approach of SI ontological transformations and its application to product configuration.