Development of Industrial Visualization Tools for Validation of Vehicle Configuration Rules

Paper in proceeding, 2012

This paper addresses the industrial visualization tools used when validating vehicle configuration rules. The configuration rules are logic expressions allowing vehicle configurations to be built, as well as which components these configurations should consist of. Valid configuration rules are permitting vehicle configurations according to the specialists’ expectations. Those vehicles also have to have the correct components assigned. Currently, the validation of configuration rules partially relies on time-consuming manual inspection and calculations. Our aim is to find a demonstrator facilitating the validation of configuration rules. Our approach is to visualize the calculation results together with the original configuration rules. In doing so, it should also be possible to use one single user interface instead of the multiple used today. The work presented in this paper is rooted in user studies at three automotive companies including both interviews and observations. The identified typical rule queries when using the industrial visualization tools and the identified difficulties informed the development of a demonstrator. This paper describes the conducted usability tests of the demonstrator, showing how the users found the validation of configuration rules less error-prone, more time-efficient and easier to learn.