03HOW WE SEE A FACTORYFIVE PREDICATES · NOT A PARTS LIST
It is not whether you have an ontology.
It is what you put in it.
Linking items, equipment and processes is the starting point. The question a factory actually needs answered comes next — "what can stop us next week?" A schema holding only nouns has nowhere to ask it.
So we do not write a factory down as a parts list. People, equipment, materials, methods and IT systems can each be removed and the factory still stands — through outsourcing, a spare machine, an unmanned line, or paper. Every one of them is an interchangeable means. What remains after every substitution is what makes a factory a factory.
P-1COMMITQuantity, time, specification and counterparty are fixed. Remove only this and what remains is a warehouse stacking goods that may never sell.
OBJECTCustomer order · work order · purchase order — the only object that holds the future
P-2TRANSFORMA physical state actually changes. Remove only this and storage and movement are all that is left.
OBJECTProcess · resource · item — consumption maps to output, and items are conserved
P-3JUDGEWhether the result meets specification is decided. Remove only this and defects ship with the good parts; a supplier downgrade costs the right to bid at all.
OBJECTSpecification · event — specification alone sits outside time, changing only by effective date
P-4PROVEWhat was made, when and under which conditions can be traced back. Remove only this and no recall boundary can be drawn after an incident.
OBJECTEvent — the only object that holds the past, and it is never edited; a correction is a new event
P-5RECOVERMore comes back than was put in. Do the other four well and an inverted margin still means every unit deepens the loss.
OBJECTCost · settlement — where commitments and events meet in currency
Nowhere in the five does the word "person" appear. Whether a human or a machine performs them is implementation, not definition. That is why an unmanned factory is possible — and why removing people does not change what a factory is.
A NOUN-ONLY SCHEMA → CAN ANSWER [ last week's utilization · defect rate by part · this month's on-time delivery ] → CANNOT ANSWER [ what can stop us next week ]
FIG.5 — The points where a factory breaks are usually not objects but documents held elsewhere: failure analysis with quality, maintenance logs with engineering, constraints in production meetings, continuity plans with corporate planning. That is why the first item in each of our 10 diagnostic domains is "conditions for unmanned operation — failure modes".
FIG.3 — KNOWLEDGE GRAPH