The Challenge
Configit Ace® supports the full lifecycle of each product variant and version. This provides a repository of product configuration information that can span multiple years. Many products and systems have lifetimes that are measured in decades. Maintaining and servicing these products and systems become more challenging over time.
One of the issues that can occur is that parts used to manufacture a product, or the options used to describe the product configuration, have changed. This can lead to conflicts when trying to upgrade an old version of a product to support the latest capabilities.
It also causes issues when servicing older products and systems where components and options are no longer available. This can lead to lengthy delays, especially if product service needs to be done in the field.
How We Address It
The latest release of Configit Ace® provides a Minimal Conflict Set API that can help maintenance and service technicians to identify the cause of invalid configurations faster. When an invalid configuration is passed to the API, a list of conflicting feature combinations is returned. These combinations provide enough insight to determine what is causing the conflict.
For example, if an invalid configuration is provided where only one feature is invalid, it can lead to multiple conflicts as this feature can be combined with multiple other features.
The Benefits
Using the minimal set of conflicts provided by the API, it is possible to identify features that are involved in multiple conflicts and thereby isolate the cause of invalid configurations quickly.
