OPS.Reference:1.2 - Recover the relations that make an operation possible

Several kinds of dependence connect operating units. A later action may need a result produced earlier. Two actions may compete for the same resource. A permission or state condition may enable an action without being consumed by it. Several outputs may have to be present together before the recipient can accept the result. A commitment connects participants through what they have undertaken to provide. These relations determine which continuations are available; a single sequence or one organization chart may show only some of them.

Describe an operating arrangement by explaining how those dependencies will be satisfied. Identify the contribution of each action, how its result reaches its receiver, what shared means it occupies, and how a return or exception changes the remaining work. For a known manufacturing method this may yield a repeatable route with alternative machines. For a service case, new facts can select the next permitted action. For continuing infrastructure service, maintenance and incident response preserve an operating condition across many episodes. The actual work can overlap, repeat or branch in each arrangement. OPS.2 chooses views for these different questions; OPS.11 and OPS.11.1 recover the dependencies that the views must preserve.

Scope, functional organization and modular organization answer different questions. Bringing an external laboratory into the model widens the operating scope. Distinguishing the contributions of producing a result, maintaining the means of production and improving their method can expose functional layers, when their production-and-use relations organize the account. Grouping teams or equipment into modules with interfaces can create modular levels. Those levels need their own part and interface relations. One team can contribute in several functional layers, and several modules can jointly perform one function. A longer planning horizon, a higher position in a chart or another row in a diagram establishes neither structure. FPF C.30.STRAT:4.2 supplies this distinction when it matters to the design.

The resulting description is knowledge about a possible or actual arrangement. To realize the arrangement, participants must obtain the needed contributions and access, and establish the necessary agreements. Performing the actions produces dated work and results. A changed description, a changed reusable method, a changed allocation and a changed organization can therefore lead to different next actions even when all are described as “changing the process”. OPS.16 qualifies method change; OCE.4 and OCE.6 supply organization design and effective assignment where those relations must change. An ordinary operating allocation can reuse an already sufficient arrangement.