Patent ID: 7188075

Claim:
A method for selling a configurable product incorporating at least one feature to be selected by a customer, wherein the method allows a customer to dynamically interact with a seller of the product and with a supplier of a feature of the product over a network during the configuration, the method comprising: (a) receiving a feature selection from the customer at a seller; (b) updating an inventory library based upon the received selection to reflect constraints imposed by the received feature selection, the constraints relating to a technical feature limitation, a price limitation or availability of the configurable product; (c) providing the received selection to a supplier system during the configuration of the product with the customer, wherein the supplier system is associated with a supplier of the selected feature, wherein the supplier is independent from the seller; (d) receiving real-time information from the supplier system comprising at least one of availability date and price for the selected feature, the information being received by the customer during the configuration; (e) wherein when an indication is received from the customer indicating the customer is not satisfied with the availability date or price, providing to the supplier system customer-specified price for the selected feature; (f) providing, to the customer, accommodation data from the supplier system, the accommodation data responsive to the customer-specified price for the selected feature, wherein the accommodation data includes a second availability date, wherein the second availability date received from the supplier system is in response to the customer-specified price provided to the supplier system; (g) updating at least one of a manufacturing bill of materials, a pricing bill of materials, and a configuration bill of materials based on the received selection; (h) deriving a manufacturing bill of materials from a configuration bill of materials; and (i) mapping each feature represented in the configuration bill of materials to a corresponding hierarchal position in the manufacturing bill of materials, wherein each mapping is capable of being any one of a set of a one-to-one, a many-to-one, a one-to-many, and a many-to-many mapping.