The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jan. 23, 2001
Filed:
May. 16, 2000
Nathan S. Caswell, Yorktown Heights, NY (US);
Anil Nigam, Stamford, CT (US);
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
A method for relating a specific configuration of complex units constructed from components with standardized interfaces to the user characteristics of the complete unit. The invention provides a bidirectional mapping between a statement of value to the user through the computation of fitness for a particular purpose (or “use”) and a technical configuration. The customer can be presented with a system optimized for a particular use at a particular price point. Through presenting a range of systems around the optimum point and presenting the strength of the system for a variety of uses as the customer varies components, a wide range of customer choice is presented within an understandable range of choices. Each component is characterized by a strength parameter, and the set of components is arranged as a vector. This configuration vector can then be projected on a vector representing a standard use. Particular configuration vectors are characterized by a direction and a magnitude. The magnitude represents an overall strength of a configuration related to the performance or capacity of its individual components. The direction of a general configuration vector can be compared to the direction of a configuration tuned for a particular purpose or use. Similarly, a configuration can be constructed by scaling its magnitude along the direction defined by a tuned configuration and varying the direction to optimize among various uses.