PARALLEL CONSISTENCY CHECKING OF AUTOMOTIVE PRODUCT DATA
Wolfgang Blochinger, Carsten Sinz, Wolfgang Küchlin · 2002
This paper deals with a parallel approach to the verification of consistency aspects of an in-dustrial product configuration data base. The data base we analyze is used by DaimlerChrysler to check the orders for cars and commercial vehicles of their Mercedes lines. By formalizing the ordering process and employing techniques from symbolic computation we could estab-lish a set of tools that allow the automatic execution of huge series of consistency checks, thereby ultimately enhancing the quality of the product data. However, occasional occurrences of computation intensive checks are a limiting factor for the usability of the tools. Therefore, a prototypical parallel re-implementation using our Distributed Object-Oriented Threads System (DOTS) was carried out. Performance measurements on a heterogeneous cluster of shared-memory multiprocessor Unix workstations and standard Windows PCs revealed considerable speed-ups and substantially reduced the average waiting time for individual checks. We thus arrive at a noticeable improvement in usability of the consistency checking tools. 1