Introduction

In this and the following chapters we are going to examine how a novel analytical treatment of production processes may contribute to the analysis of structural dynamics of economic systems.

The distinguishing characteristic of the approach we adopt is one that isolates three levels of analysis of a production process:

1. (i) task identification and task arrangement;

2. (ii) fund factor analysis (the bundling and utilisation of capabilities);

3. (iii) material transformation and the organisation of materials-in-process flows.

The production process: appearance and conceptualisation

Let us start with a descriptive account of a particular production process in operation: in such a process – think in the first instance of a manufacturing process – ‘materials’ are being shaped and are changing their characteristics from one stage of the process to another. We may see, at any one time, different materials moving through different stages of transformation alongside each other; they may be merged or separated. There are also what one could call ‘agents’ of the production process, that is ‘objects’ or ‘people’ who are involved in the process of shaping and ‘changing’ materials. Such objects or people are involved in certain types of productive operations, for example they are handling materials in a particular way at a particular stage and may in fact perform a number of such operations either at the same time or in a sequence over time.

Even from a heuristic description of the production process it appears that the various operations which the different agents are involved in are dependent on each other.