Seed Factories/PFAllocation

Allocation Approach
We set our project requirements and measures in section 5.1, and divided the project into phases and the top two levels of functions in section 5.2. The next step in the Systems Engineering process is to divide up and assign subsets of the requirements in time and space, to the phases and lower level functions. This includes performance, operations, and maintenance requirements. The latter two are derived from the system requirements even if not explicitly stated at the highest level. Because production capacity and community size grow over time, the complete project goals are only met at the end of the last expansion phase. So first we set reduced levels of the project requirements to meet in each phase. Next, the descriptions we wrote in section 5.2 only defined the general scope of tasks included in each function. So we allocate the end point performance levels, operations, and maintenance subsets for each function in more exact terms. The intent is that the sum of the assigned detailed requirements satisfies all the project level goals. Finally, we can define the reduced levels for each function in each phase.

Phase Requirements
If we examine the requirements in section 5.1, some will change more than others as the project evolves through its growth phases, so we consider them individually. Since we do not have an optimized design yet, we do not know the best way to divide up the requirements by growth phase. Instead, we will make what we think are reasonable assumptions as a starting point. We expect this first draft of the phase requirements will be updated as the design progresses. The discussion that follows uses the same numbering as in section 5.1.

 1. Objectives 


 * 1.1 Project Goal - The overall goals of the project are to be locally owned and operated, and support some of the needs and wants of the owners and their associated community. As a first generation example for a self-expanding system we do not expect to meet 100% of what people need and want, nor reach full automation.  Instead, we set a more moderate goal of ~25% for features with variable performance levels.  Any project needs some funding and development to get started.  We allow for a fairly large amount, to be supplied from outside the community in the early stages.  Most of this is assigned to preliminary Research and Development (Phase 0), which begins before the Personal Production project (Phase 1).  This allows us to tap a wider range of financial and technical capacity than a small community of end-users can supply.


 * Personal Production may begin with a high level of outside support, but over time we expect increasing participation by community members, who end up owning and operating items themselves. Concurrently, the project will meet a growing percentage of their needs.  Local ownership is assumed to scale like home and vehicle ownership, with some percentage up-front and the remainder acquired over a period of years.  We can't set definite numbers to this until the design is more complete, and individual circumstances can be taken into account.  Requiring only a partial percentage up-front makes it easier for people to start participating.


 * 1.2 Project Scale - The end goal is to supply 25% of the needs of a community of 2640. Across project phases, we assume that the easiest tasks are tackled first, and are reached at smaller community size with less equipment.  So the community size grows geometrically by 2.175x in each phase while performance grows only linearly.  Numerically, we assume the community size is 25 at the end of building the conventional workshop, then grows to 55, 120, 250, 550, 1200, and 2640 at the end of phases 1A to 1F.  The goal for the initial workshop is to meet 1% of community needs and desires, growing to 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, and 25% by sub-phase.


 * One of the growth methods for a Seed Factory is by scaling - building larger versions of equipment than was in the starter set. Starting with smaller equipment requires less starter funds, and allows early use of the ability to expand.  Even at the end of the growth phases, a significant percentage of outside supplies will be needed, and this will increase along with production scale.  In the later growth phases we are making more of the harder to make items, which would require relatively more equipment to produce.  So we will assume the output rate will grow more slowly in percentage terms by phase.


 * 1.3 Choice - Another important goal is choice for the owner/operators and the community, including what products to make. However, we cannot design the production equipment without knowing something about the outputs it will produce.  We will therefore use the US Consumer Price Index as a proxy for what people want, since it represents averages from surveys of what people actually spend their money on.  By phase we will assume hobby and entertainment products are made at the smallest scale, followed by basic goods, like food and shelter.  For calculation purposes, we will use typical mixes of items within the goods categories.  We will keep in mind factory flexibility, so that the actual owners can choose the production mix within some reasonable range.

 2. Performance 


 * 2.1 Location - The project goal is to be locally operated, so it has to be designed for an environment where people live. This first example is assumed to be in the 39 county Atlanta Combined Statistical Area so that we can apply actual conditions to the design.  The local environment doesn't change by phase for a given location.  Later examples will cover a wider range of locations and therefore a wider range of environments.  The design would need to be modified to cover the wider range, or different versions developed to suit different conditions.


 * 2.2 Growth - The growth rate of 5%/year is after initial start-up, which is defined as 10% of full capacity, and therefore the end of phase 1C. The reason for this requirement is to make the project attractive to the owners, however a small starter set is expected to have limited capacity for growth.  We assume hobby outputs at first, and hobbies are not expected to produce a surplus or income, so growth rates in the early phases may be negative.  This means more replacement equipment supplied from outside than is produced internally.  At full capacity, we expect a wider range of specialized equipment, and that people develop better skills, so that growth will be faster.  Achievable growth rates can be estimated once some design details are produced, and they may be considerably different than the goal set here.


 * 2.3 Improved Technology - The first five of these requirements (Local Resources, Self Production, Cyclic Flows, Automation, and Autonomy) all have final goals set at 25%, due to the limited scale of Personal Production, and it being first of it's kind for self-expansion. To start with, we adopt the percentage targets by phase from 1.2 Project Scale above.  The sixth requirement is to limit complexity for the starter set.  This is to limit cost and design work to get started.  We would prefer not to use every existing manufacturing process when we reach full capacity for the same reason.  We therefore set complexity targets for phases 1A to 1F of 8, 14, 21, 29, 38, and 48 major elements.  Setting targets like this forces us to choose flexible equipment and think about adapting one device for multiple tasks.  These targets are for the custom designed seed and expansion elements, it does not count purchased conventional tools and machines.  The particular numbers are arbitrary at this point.


 * 2.4 Quality of Life - Meeting people's needs can cover a wide range of quality. For example, a log cabin and a mansion both provide shelter, but at vastly different levels.  Rather than attempt to measure quality for a wide range of items, we use the monetary equivalent of goods provided from factory production plus the other income of the community.  At full capacity the project only supplies 25% of average total needs, so conventional work and other income sources are needed.  We include as a base the average US 2016 GDP of $56,400 plus 25% during the project to $70,500/year.  Which goods and services are to be supplied conventionally and which by self-production will be determined by later analysis, and to some degree during the project by personal preference.  As capacity grows during the project, we expect the quality and quantity of products we can make to increase, so we assume their value will go up somewhat faster than linear.  So we set targets of 1, 3, 6, 10, 16, and 25% increase over the base by phase.


 * 2.5 Data - Sharing of project experience and data is not variable with the growth phases, so we skip this as a phase requirement.


 * 2.6 Resources - The intent of this requirement is a highly productive system with a surplus of energy and materials production once full capacity is reached. For earlier phases we will look at the ratio of production vs. factory maintenance and support for what has been built to that point.  Until we get a better understanding of the design, we set this at a level value of 2.0 across the phases.

 3. Time 


 * 3.1 Completion Time - This does not apply as a separate requirement at the project level. How fast the growth phases are completed will depend largely on how many people participate, and thus how fast the designs are completed and how much in funds and labor is available for construction.  We cannot predict those, but we can set targets assuming they are available as needed.  Based on large scale construction project experience, we will assume each phase requires a minimum of 14 months to start after the previous phase, with Phase 1A taking 24 months to design and build, and 1F taking 84 months total.  Each phase takes 12 months longer to complete because of the larger scale and more complexity.  Phases can overlap because the start of design does not have to wait until the previous phase is complete, and some community members will dedicate more effort to the project and can progress faster.


 * 3.2 Operating Life - At the project level the service life is intended to be indefinite, given maintenance, repair, and replacement. The project equipment is built the first time from a starter kit to full expansion.  So by repeating the building process when equipment breaks we can achieve a long term service life.  However, building new items from scratch may not be the most efficient way to do this, and the service life of individual parts is not specified.  We cannot specify the best way to meet this requirement by phase until the design is more complete.  Instead we will include at each phase a requirement to optimize the design for maintenance, repair, and replacement for sustained permanent operation.

 4. Cost 

At the start of design we are setting cost goals. As the work progresses, we will later develop cost estimates, and then actual costs. The goals are intended to keep costs within reasonable levels in relation to meeting the other requirements. In particular, the ratio of cost to performance is often considered the most important measure of a project.


 * 4.1 Total Development Cost - This includes the one-time non-recurring costs for technology development and system design. The early phases can use smaller versions of the factory equipment because they are designed for fewer people.  Their complexity, and thus the design work, is about the same, so the relative design cost is higher at the start.  Additionally, some items, like the factory control software, only need to be designed once in the early phases, and then slightly modified for a larger factory with more machine types in later phases.  Finally, smaller equipment and fewer different machines are less expensive to prototype.  Combining all these factors, we use our scoring formula to set goals of 12.5, 6.25, 4, 3, 2.5, and 2 times the per capita location cost per phase of $20, 35, 47.5, 57, 61 and 66.6 thousand, to get $250, 218.75, 190, 171, 152.5, and 133.2 thousand/capita development.  Given the community sizes under 1.2 Project Scale, this results in development cost goals of $13.75, 26.25, 47.5, 94.05, 183, 352 million for phases 1A to 1F.  These values are cumulative, so each phase only requires the difference in development cost from the previous phase.  As an open-source project, much of this cost may be contributed design and construction labor.  These numbers appear large for a community-scale project, but we expect to build many locations over time to justify the investment.


 * 4.2 Location Cost - The location cost targets are listed above under 4.1, and covers outside parts, materials, and labor besides what the project produces internally. At earlier phases this value will be larger relative to production capacity, because the factory is less capable of producing items, and therefore more must be purchased.

 5. Technical Risk 


 * 5.1 Risk Allowances - The goal is to reach 37.5% performance and design uncertainties at the end of phase 1F. The earlier phases will have less experience and fewer completed designs, so we will scale the risk allowance to be 48, 46, 44, 42, 40%, and 37.5% by phase.  The values remain high even at the end of the project, because this is a first of its kind, and we will not have long-term experience with building and operating such systems.

 6. Safety 


 * 6.1 Location Risk - The goal is to provide better than average safety for the community by the end of the project phases. The early phases will introduce new construction and new production processes with risks that are poorly understood at first.  Later phases will have more experience with these same processes and better understanding of how to optimize their safety.  We accept some higher early risks because of the smaller number of people involved and future benefits.  The early phases have a small contribution to overall activity, so we allow and +20%, +5%, -4%, -7%, -9% and -10% of US averages by phase.


 * 6.2 Population Risk - The goal is to reduce natural and human-made risks to the nearby population equal to the project community size by 5%. The reduction is level by phase, but increases by population over the phases.  A wide variety of risks can be addressed, such as providing fire-fighting assistance or severe weather shelters.

 7. Sustainability 


 * 7.1 Biosphere Security - The end goal is to preserve 178 species x sites outside their existing natural ranges. Early project phases won't have as much ability to do this, so we scale the requirement exponentially at 16, 25, 40, 65, 100, and 178 by phase.  Since the community grows by phase, the species/person decreases from 0.29 to 0.067.


 * 7.2 Survivability - The goal is to provide 25 millionths compensation for civilization level critical risks by the end of phase 1F. We scale this requirement linearly by phase to 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, and 25 millionths (0.0025%)

 8. Openness 


 * 8.1 Open Design - The intent is for the project to share the technology and design methods it develops. This requirement does not change by project phase.

Assign Functional Requirements
After making our assumed distribution of requirements across the growth phases, we now turn to the functional elements we have divided the project into. The identity of the functions is preserved across the growth phases. So the function names, numbers, and flows linking them to other functions do not change from one phase to the next. The quantities, however will change by phase. This includes the possibility that a given function is not used at all in an early phase, and the quantities are zero.

We identified three top level functions and 18 second-tier functions, so we break up and assign subsets of the requirements to each of them. We take care that the subsets add up numerically to the next higher level, and that each requirement is accounted for somewhere in the project. The descriptions that follow are for assignments to the top level functions.

Top Level Functions
Our three top level functions are Provide Production Capacity, Provide Habitation Capacity, and Provide Transport Capacity. We will refer to them as Production, Habitation, and Transport for short.

 1. Objectives 


 * 1.1 Project Goal - The levels of local ownership are distributed to all three functions such that the total meets the goals of the phase. They may vary by functional element.  Supporting the physical needs of the owners is assigned to the point of use, which is Habitation and Transport.  The required levels of Production outputs are then derived from the flows necessary to meet those needs.


 * 1.2 Project Scale - The number of new people supported per year is assigned to all three functions by creating Production, Habitation, and Transport Scale requirements, and assigning the proper number of people/year by phase.


 * 1.3 Choice - The choice of project locations, internal organization, and operations by members and residents is assigned to the future planning task of the Control Location function of Production. That task will include mechanisms to take inputs from people, and incorporate them into the project plans.

 2. Performance 


 * 2.1 Location - The operating environment is constant across the top three functions, since the project is defined as locally operated. It is passed down unchanged to each of them.


 * 2.2 Growth - The capacity for growth of 5%/year is levied against all three top functions, since production and transport levels must grow in parallel to support habitation needs. It applies from the end of Phase 1C and later.  The inherent growth rates in earlier phases will be derived from the level of surplus resource production.  Actual growth rates, as opposed to inherent growth, will depend on the number of people and sources of funds for the project.  By analogy to a forest, the inherent growth rate of the trees is fixed, but you can plant more trees and expand the forest faster than that.


 * 2.3 Improved Technology - The general requirement to increase levels of self-production, recycling, and other technical features is mostly assigned to Production, but the design of Habitation and Transport elements have to accommodate those levels. So we impose a derived requirement on them to use what Production makes and return items to be recycled.  This general requirement is divided into more specific ones.


 * 2.3.1 Local Resources - Providing a percentage of continuing matter and energy needs from local resources is mainly assigned to Production. Some resources may be met by Habitation, such as rainwater collection or rooftop solar panels.  Percentage is measured in economic terms.  Continuing needs are after initial construction.  Higher levels of outside supplies may be needed at first.


 * 2.3.2 Self Production - The requirement is to provide a growing percentage of economic value for the owners internally from the project. Use of homes and personal transportation are part of this economic value.  We further divide the overall percentage goal into 75% from Production, 15% from Habitation, and 10% from Transport.  That division is somewhat arbitrary and may need to evolve by growth phase, so long as the total adds to 100%.


 * 2.3.3 Cyclic Flows - The requirement is to recycle and reprocess a growing percentage of local waste flows. The first part of this, physical delivery of wastes back to production, is allocated to all three main functions.  Conversion of wastes back to useful form is assigned to Production.  Outside scrap and wastes may be used as a source of materials, but this is not counted as part of the recycled percentage, it is new input.


 * 2.3.4 Automation - The requirement is to reduce human labor by a significant percentage relative to the US average. Some reduction through automation is feasible for items like household maintenance, food preparation, and vehicle driving.  Most of the gains, though, would be for Production.  We tentatively apply 10% each to Habitation and Transport (especially internal transport within a location), and 80% to Production automation.


 * 2.3.5 Autonomy - Local control of production planning, operations tasks, and maintenance will grow in parallel with percentage local ownership (Requirement 1.1). This is imposed on all three top-level functions to be executed by local humans and control equipment.  The percentage for each function will vary, but the combined average will meet the phase percent goal.  Habitation will have a higher level of local control by the residents, but Production has a larger quantity of tasks to control.  This is due to the complex operations within Production, and that overall location responsibility is also assigned to the Production "Control Location" function.


 * 2.3.6 Complexity - This requirement is specifically about the number of Production elements, therefore it is applied to that function, and the part of Transport that involves production tasks.


 * 2.4 Quality of Life - The intent is to provide an increasing quality of life for project members by phase, in terms of equivalent GDP. This includes the value of directly used factory products such as food and home-building materials, sale of surplus production to generate income, and outside/non project work.  Since requirement 2.6 calls for a high level of surplus production, we will allocate 75% of this requirement to Production.  Habitation and Transport are assigned 20 and 5% respectively, based on their relative proportions in the Consumer Price Index.  Their annual GDP contribution is converted capital values using typical lease rates of 8% for Habitation, and Transport vehicle value declining at 12%/year plus operating and maintenance expenses.  This results in a Phase 1F goal of $50,000/person of added Habitation value.  Transport is more complicated to calculate, and we will defer that to later.


 * 2.5 Data - Sharing of project experience and data is imposed mainly on the Production function, since it already contains design and operations data. Some data may be collected from Transport and Habitation, with the limitation that personal data will be protected.


 * 2.6 Resources - This requirement for a large surplus in materials and energy over internal needs is allocated to the Production function, and is measured by continuing needs of that function only, not total needs counting Habitation and Transport.

 3. Time 


 * 3.1 Completion Time - This requirement is mostly allocated to building the Production elements, and somewhat to Transport which supports production.  The minimum phase design and construction schedules are passed directly to these functions.  The schedule for Habitation and personal Transport elements depends on how many people are involved in the project that need them.  Therefore actual, as opposed to minimum, schedules, cannot be defined in advance.  The planning function within Production will accept inputs from people on an ongoing basis, and adjust progress from phase to phase and construction rates within phases as needed.


 * 3.2 Operating Life - As noted in the phase requirements for operating life, the project as a whole has an indefinite service life with ongoing maintenance, repair, and replacement. We pass down a requirement to optimize each of the three top level functions for an indefinite life assuming maintenance.  That optimization will include the fact the project has its own production capacity, assembly areas, and construction equipment, and can therefore do much of its own maintenance tasks.

 4. Cost 


 * 4.1 Total Development Cost - Total development cost is allocated as a simple sum of the various functions that make up the project. We will use 60% for Production, 20% for Habitation, and 20% for Transport, times the phase development as a first approximation.  As the design progresses, we will very likely update these values.  Development cost is net of any sales or income from the project, so it represents the maximum outlay at any point in the phase.


 * 4.2 Location Cost - Location cost is also allocated as a sum of the project function costs. As an initial estimate, we will use 40% for Production, 40% for Habitation, and 20% for Transport, times the phase location cost per person.  The relatively higher Habitation estimate versus Development Cost for Production is because Habitation will tend to use repetitive construction elements, while Production will be adding new and different elements in each phase.  Again, these first estimates will very likely be updated as the design evolves.

 5. Technical Risk 


 * 5.1 Risk Allowances - This requirement is the amount of over-design to account for uncertainties in performance. It is an estimate before the final hardware is built and tested, at which point you know the actual performance.  The allowance is to ensure the final design performs at least as well as the requirements specify.  It is particularly important for a complex and interconnected system such as this one, because a deficiency in one element can cause others to under-perform, and in turn these others can affect still more parts of the system.  Therefore we build in a positive bias above the required levels.


 * We allocate this risk according to an estimate of how much new design is in each of the three top level functions. Much of Habitation will be conventional building materials, so it gets the lowest share, 15%.  Transport may use more new designs, such as robotic vehicles, so we give it a 25% share.  The remaining 60% is allocated to Production because design for self-production, integrating many different processes, and automated control of all of it have a large degree of new design.  These allocations are combined to reach the phase allowances for the project as a whole.

 6. Safety 


 * 6.1 Location Risk - This consists of life and property risk internal to the project. Until a risk analysis is done, we don't have a good way to estimate where these risks are, and how they could be reduced.  Therefore the risk levels relative to US averages is divided among the top level functions such that the total goal is met, but specific percentages are not specified at this time.


 * 6.2 Population Risk - The goal is to have a positive impact by reducing net risk from the project to the nearby population. This consists of two parts.  The first is new risks caused by the project.  Particular attention needs to be given to Production processes and off-site transportation.  The second is active risk reduction by positive changes supplied by the project.  Possible mechanisms include a higher tax base funding community improvements, donated goods and services, supplying safer products, or other means.  Prior to doing a risk analysis, we assign 50% of this requirement to Production, and 25% each to Transport and Habitation, scaled to the community size by phase.  We expect these values to be updated.

 7. Sustainability 


 * 7.1 Biosphere Security - Natural species will exist at and near the project location, and we take it as a default assumption not to endanger these local species. Preserving other species outside their normal range is an active effort above this.  The intent is for the project to contribute to long term sustainability of the biosphere.  The level of effort is scaled by the size of the project community.  Prior to analyzing the most effective way to do this task, we will assign it 50% each to Production and Habitation, because both Growing Organics and landscaping and pets in Habitation involve living things.  Species preservation may be done locally at the project, or at other locations or through agencies if that is more efficient.


 * 7.2 Survivability - This requirement is also scaled to the project community. We assign it to Production because the most likely areas to reduce civilization level risks are in energy production and recycling.  Because we will have design and production capacity, there is also the possibility of contributing to larger projects.

 8. Openness 


 * 8.1 Open Design - The general requirement is to share project technology and design methods so that others can benefit from them, and hope that others outside the project will share their developments in return. Project members need incentive to contribute their own work. So specific instances of designs may be kept proprietary if desired, and the physical hardware and products would be owned by them.  Besides proprietary designs, the other limitation on general openness is protecting the personal privacy of project members and the community.  We assign this requirement to the Production function, because project data will be collected and stored in that function's data networks, and external communication and privacy protection is best implemented there.

Lower Tier Functions
Now that we have allocated the requirements to the three top level functions, we would continue this process in later rounds of the design work. Requirements would be allocated to the second and lower tiers, until we reach functional elements that can be individually designed. Section 5.0 as a whole is intended to be an example of how to apply the design process to a particular project. We think that describing the assignment of requirements to every lower level function, and their quantities by phase, is too much detail to include here in the main text of the book. It would break the flow of showing how to do the design work. Instead we will place most of those details in Section 9.0 - Design Notes, and refer readers there if they are interested.

To complete this first round of requirements allocation, and as a starting point for the next lower tier, we can gather the assigned requirements by function into tables. These then serve as the input requirements for the parts of the system in the same way the system requirements in Section 5.1 serve for the project as a whole. For completeness, the tables list requirements not applied to that function, but in subsequent work they are skipped and only the applied subset is analyzed. The values given include the variation by phase. When seven values are given, they apply to conventional equipment plus Phases 1A to F. If six values are given they only apply to the phases.