Internal Operations Loci

Systems Economics Lexicon · Resource Loci & the Guide to Classification

Chapter 10 traced how a resource behaves once it’s inside a customer’s system — what it is. This chapter traces what happens to it next: which specific work group inside the customer’s operations actually uses it, and whether that’s the end of the trail or just one more step in a longer chain.

From resources to work groups

The Constituent and Final Resource Loci covered in Chapter 10 describe the function a resource fulfills once it’s in a customer’s hands. But every one of those resources gets used somewhere specific — inside a work group performing its own function within the customer’s operations. The Internal Operations Loci are what capture that: collectively, the sub-agent-level work loci in the Customer Section, and individually, the Work Group Locus and the Department Locus. Filling these in after the resource loci is what actually completes the Customer Field of an Enterprise Barcode.

The First Work Group Locus

Moving up from the resource loci, the next field is the First Work Group Locus (WG1) — the work group in the customer’s internal operations where the enterprise’s product actually gets used. The path there depends on what kind of product the enterprise provides. A resource product enterprise supplies subject resources, or components of them, for use in a work group; an activity product enterprise performs a work group directly rather than supplying something for someone else to use. Determining a product’s function takes at most two steps: first, whether it’s an activity product or a resource product; second, if it’s a resource product, whether it’s final or constituent. For an activity product specifically, filling out the first product tier is direct — the Enterprise Locus gets copied straight into the First Work Group Locus, and the resource loci stay blank, since there’s no resource there to describe.

Why this needs its own set of fields

This is the step that turns a static description of a resource into an actual account of what a customer’s business does with it. Knowing that a company buys concrete mixers is a fact about a purchase. Knowing which work group inside the construction company actually uses those mixers — and whether that work group is where the trail ends or whether it feeds into something further up the chain — is a fact about how the construction company itself is structured. The Internal Operations Loci are what make the second kind of fact recoverable from a barcode, not just the first.

See also: Terminality in the Locus Model · Work Group Field

Part of Resource Loci & the Guide to Classification, course 5 of 7 in the Locus Theory series. For the full term-by-term specification, see the Lexicon.