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Engineering Systems Integration
Services and Products
Consider the action of piling wood, that is, that of moving the pieces of wood
from one location to another. We call this action a service. An action (in support of a need) is called a service. We consider the pieces may have been
moved several times (each time a service). Services are queues and accesses
to facilitate the exchange and use of energy, matter, material wealth, or information. Products are usually thought of as physical items that have various
functionalities. Products and services have functions. We could consider a
pile of wood to be a product. Not all products are integrated. A cut piece of
wood is a product that can be purchased at a hardware store or lumber yard.
The wood is the result of many processes, including planning, cutting a tree,
to milling, to grading (for quality), pricing, shipping, inventorying, stocking,
to selling. Many products went into the pile of wood, individually considered as products. The aggregation of wood is a product of labor (move wood).
Products have only limited physical properties and attributes that can be
used, but services are only constrained by access rather typically than limited. Limitations are conditions of boundaries, and once imposed they are
immutable. The physical design of some products, for example, a single-hand
instrument telephone, limits the number of people who can use the product,
versus a product that is designed to accommodate a service with such restriction, for example, a speaker phone made of technology that supports communications with a small group of people. Technology would seem to be the
limitation for carrying the communications beyond one to only a few people.
Limitations can be thought of as the budget earmarked and the schedule
determined for a project, whereas constraints are the apportionments of
money distributed to the tasks along with its designated schedule.
Constraints, however, are conditions of allocations, that once established are
changeable, however vicissitudinous. Constraints are flexible within the
overall limitations set for the project. Labor hours saved on one task may
benefit another task, as dollars overspent on a task may force different behaviors on other tasks. Therefore, products have limited scalability in contrast to
services. Services can be enabled (e.g., through technology) to be more scalable than products. Of course, a personal service (one-on-one) may not be
scalable. Depending on the design, access to service functions can be made
more scalable than access to product functions. Scalability is doing what is
done with either more people performing the same activity or with one
person being able to do more through some economy of numbers, technology, or process. Scalability is all about either doing what you do with more
people doing the same thing or being able to do more with one person.
Scalability in the first instance (more people doing the same thing with the
same product) implies that each person requires a product, that is, scalability
by single-user products. Scalability in the second instance (being able to do
more with one person) is through efficiency by using a service. Scalability in
Engineering Systems Integration
Services and Products
Consider the action of piling wood, that is, that of moving the pieces of wood
from one location to another. We call this action a service. An action (in support of a need) is called a service. We consider the pieces may have been
moved several times (each time a service). Services are queues and accesses
to facilitate the exchange and use of energy, matter, material wealth, or information. Products are usually thought of as physical items that have various
functionalities. Products and services have functions. We could consider a
pile of wood to be a product. Not all products are integrated. A cut piece of
wood is a product that can be purchased at a hardware store or lumber yard.
The wood is the result of many processes, including planning, cutting a tree,
to milling, to grading (for quality), pricing, shipping, inventorying, stocking,
to selling. Many products went into the pile of wood, individually considered as products. The aggregation of wood is a product of labor (move wood).
Products have only limited physical properties and attributes that can be
used, but services are only constrained by access rather typically than limited. Limitations are conditions of boundaries, and once imposed they are
immutable. The physical design of some products, for example, a single-hand
instrument telephone, limits the number of people who can use the product,
versus a product that is designed to accommodate a service with such restriction, for example, a speaker phone made of technology that supports communications with a small group of people. Technology would seem to be the
limitation for carrying the communications beyond one to only a few people.
Limitations can be thought of as the budget earmarked and the schedule
determined for a project, whereas constraints are the apportionments of
money distributed to the tasks along with its designated schedule.
Constraints, however, are conditions of allocations, that once established are
changeable, however vicissitudinous. Constraints are flexible within the
overall limitations set for the project. Labor hours saved on one task may
benefit another task, as dollars overspent on a task may force different behaviors on other tasks. Therefore, products have limited scalability in contrast to
services. Services can be enabled (e.g., through technology) to be more scalable than products. Of course, a personal service (one-on-one) may not be
scalable. Depending on the design, access to service functions can be made
more scalable than access to product functions. Scalability is doing what is
done with either more people performing the same activity or with one
person being able to do more through some economy of numbers, technology, or process. Scalability is all about either doing what you do with more
people doing the same thing or being able to do more with one person.
Scalability in the first instance (more people doing the same thing with the
same product) implies that each person requires a product, that is, scalability
by single-user products. Scalability in the second instance (being able to do
more with one person) is through efficiency by using a service. Scalability in