Model-driven data maintenance for configuration systems to tackle the challenges of mass customisation and organisational forgetting with focus on the aviation industry

Abstract

In past century, a transition from craftsmanship production to standardisation production has taken place. An approach to combine both methods is mass customization, which needs to be supported by accurate IT Systems, in fact configurators. The main objective of a configuration system is to digitise knowledge and automate tasks. This contribution elaborates a model-driven approach for configuration data maintenance which can be intuitively used by the domain experts and is powerful to cope with complex domains like aircraft industry. Within Airbus, a project based on this approach was awarded the renowned „Airbus Awards for Excellence 2008“ in the category of innovation.