Problem Decomposition in Configuration

In the present work the issue of decomposing a configuration problem is approached in a framework where the domain knowledge is represented in a structured way by using a KL-One like language and whole-part relations play a major role in defining the structure of the configurable objects. The representation formalism provides also a constraint language for expressing complex relations among components and subcomponents. The paper presents a notion of boundness among constraints which assures that two components not involved in a same set of bound constraints can be independently configured. The computation of {\em boundness} among constraints is the basis for partitioning constraints associated with each component to be configured. Such a partitioning induces a decomposition of the configuration problem into independent subproblems.