Patent ID: 8161045
Filing Date: 2012-04-17
Classification: G06F

Abstract:
1. A computer implemented method for identifying interchangeable parts, the computer implemented method comprising: identifying, by an intelligent agent running on a processing unit, first attributes for a set of parts in a set of catalogs by identifying patterns in text descriptions associated with each part in the set of parts to form name-value pairs for each of the first attributes; comparing, by the intelligent agent, the first attributes for the set of parts to a set of second attributes for a selected part; assigning a weight to each of the first attributes based on whether each of the first attributes is correlated to an attribute in the set of second attributes, wherein the weight assigned is inversely proportional to a quantity of parts in the set of parts that have the each of the first attributes; ranking each part in the set of parts using the weight assigned to each attribute in the first attributes; and identifying a set of interchangeable parts using the ranking for each part in the set of parts.