Patent ID: 7315844
Filing Date: 2008-01-01
Classification: G06Q

Abstract:
1. A system for estimating a cost of a product and/or service, said product and/or service comprising a multiplicity of components, said system comprising: a user interface for receiving an identification of components of the product and/or service and cost dependency information of each of the components on other components of a same product and/or service; generating means for generating a representation of a directed acyclic graph which includes the received identified components and the cost dependency information of each of the components on other components of the same product and/or service; and converting means for converting the representation of the directed acyclic graph to a representation of a weighted undirected graph for use in estimating the cost of the product and/or service, the converting means comprising: identifying means for identifying one or more first components with no cost dependencies, and assigning said one or more first components to an nth priority in order of cost calculation, where “n” is an integer; first determining means for determining one or more second components whose costs depend on the costs of said one or more first components, and assigning said one or more second components to an n+1 priority in order of cost calculation; second determining means for determining one or more third components whose costs depend on said one or more second components, and assigning said one or more third components to an n+2 priority in order of cost calculation; third determining means for determining if any of said one or more third components were previously assigned to said n+1 priority, and responsive to determining that any of said one or more third components were previously assigned to said n+1 priority, removing any of said one or more third components from said n+1 priority assignment; and fourth determining means for determining an order to calculate costs of said components based on the cost calculation priority to which said components are assigned, wherein the lower the priority of said component, the earlier in said order.