Reusing components across multiple configurators

The purpose of this paper is to examine the way in which an engineering company reuses components of existing configurators across multiple configurators. As the use of configurators has been extended across all lifecycle phases of products, product families, and services, companies tend to develop multiple configurators to support their business processes.
Often, companies develop new configurators from scratch even though some existing configurators comprise components that serve a similar purpose. While the concept of reusability is discussed extensively in software and expert systems development literature, it has not been addressed in the existing literature on product configurators.
In this study, the research team primarily focuses on the approach of reusing and sharing components from existing configurators to develop new configurators in a multi-configurator portfolio. We also examine the benefits and challenges of this reusability approach. The research is supplemented with empirical evidence based on an exploratory case study.
The results demonstrate the way in which an engineering company uses and structures multiple configurators, the experiences with the concepts of reusing and sharing of configurator components and the lessons learned.