Resource configuration and allocation-a case study of constrained heuristic search

Constrained heuristic search techniques are applied to the problems of product configuration and inventory planning. The architecture of Coral, an interactive, real-time decision support system that maximizes the total number of products requested, given one or more substitutable configurations, is presented. Coral gives inventory managers a tool for managing and allocating component inventories, thus maximizing the number of complete orders. Coral treats configuration and allocation as constraint-satisfaction and optimization problems in which constraints guide the problem solving. The configuration, resource allocation, and performance of a histogram-based input interface to enter order-composition specifications and a tabular report to enter definitions of ammunition rounds into Coral are described.<>