CIMdata Press Releases
Configit Software Product Review: New Report from CIMdata
“A Powerful Approach to Managing Complex Configurations”
ANN ARBOR, Michigan, February 17, 2006—CIMdata consulting and research firm announces the availability of a new product review of Configit Software. The report describes the difficulties generally associated with traditional approaches to configuration management and Configit Software’s approach to address them. It also takes a look at the business issues driving companies towards a better way to handle the definition and management of product complexity, and how a number of companies are utilizing Configit Software’s technology.
Ed Miller, President of CIMdata explained that in today’s highly competitive global market, “it is no longer good enough just to reduce cost, shorten cycle time, and improve product quality. A company must also be able to introduce more innovative products with more features utilizing more innovative business processes and techniques.” However, innovation must be achieved while reducing overall product related costs across development, production and service, and maintaining product leadership. This requires leveraging and reusing the product-related intellectual capital created by business partners working together across the extended enterprise value chain, and designing and delivering highly-configurable and feature-rich, and often more complex, products quickly and efficiently.
Mr. Miller added: “Dealing with product complexity has never been an easy task.” With the increasing demand for more feature-rich products, which have a high degree of configurable options, many companies find themselves constrained by old configuration management methodologies and supporting technologies. “The push for mass customization and the consumers’ desire to have a product that can be tailored to their specific needs have driven much of this complexity—a complexity that must be handled by an efficient configuration management methodology and the appropriate enabling technologies.” said Mr. Miller.
CIMdata’s review of Configit Software’s approach in solving the main problems associated with today’s top- down configuration methodology indicates that their technology focuses on streamlining the configuration construct (i.e., how a configuration solution stores and transverses an option tree). At the core of their approach is their patented technology called Virtual Tabulation®. Virtual Tabulations® configuration technology, which was invented by Configit Software—a spin-off of the IT University of Copenhagen, is based on software verification research.
Virtual Tabulation® makes it possible to compile a description of the parameters making up a product into a very compact lossless format, called a virtual table. This mathematically based virtual table contains all legal combinations of values to the configuration rules. Configit Software has learned how to construct virtual tables that are small enough to embed virtually anywhere—for example on small embedded electronic devices.
According to CIMdata’s findings, a key benefit of Virtual Tabulation® is that this table is generated once for a
specification and can then be used repeatedly. Traditional approaches solve it over and over again. This
Virtual Tabulation® construct also allows for the configuration to be defined by a user starting anywhere
within the configuration. This approach has been used in a variety of industrial applications ranging from
serving as an embedded configurator in an industrial controller to providing a robust configuration driven
product development process. CIMdata’s assessment indicates that companies that do or wish to offer
complex, highly configurable products to the market should consider Configit Software’s solution.
Copies of the Configit Software Product Review are available at no cost as a CIMdata Complimentary Report.