Processing Network Module

Status: Designed — a minimal stub exists in the runtime. The concepts here are defined just far enough to anchor the kanban and demand modules; full modeling is deferred.

Purpose

The processing network is the map of where work happens and how material flows between those places. It has two concepts:

• A station — a place that consumes input materials, applies a transformation, and produces output materials (a CNC machine turning a blank into a part, for example). A station is therefore both a consumption point for its inputs and a production point for its outputs.
• A loop — a configured, directed route between two stations that kanban cards circulate within.

The module exists mainly to give the Kanban Cards and Demand modules something concrete to point at — the station a production request is made at, and the loops cards travel around.

Main entities

• Station — a node in the network. Two boundary varieties sit at the edge of the modeled system: a source station is a pure producer whose internal process is outside the network (Procurement, which sources from vendors), and a sink station is a pure consumer from which material leaves the system (Shipping).
• Loop — a directed route from a source station to a sink station. A card’s full lap is one circuit of one loop; the number of cards circulating in a loop is what makes it single- or multi-card.

The network is directed and may be cyclic

The full system is a directed network of stations linked by loops. Because real manufacturing has re-entrant flows — a station’s output can feed back to an earlier station — this network can contain cycles. That is expected and unproblematic: it describes physical material flow, which is legitimately circular.

Guarantees

• A loop connects two distinct stations in the same tenant — no loop points at itself, and a loop does not cross tenant boundaries.

How it relates to its neighbors

• Kanban Cards — cards circulate within loops; a card’s lap is one circuit.
• Demand — a production request is made at a station (its source/production point).

Related pages

The current per-area placeholders for the constituent concepts are kept alongside this module:

• Stations
• Loops