4 A Front-End to Demand-Activated
Production
Simulations for choosing among given options provide the citizen with ability
to simulate a product/service in use. But that first approximation, where
fixed options are provided to the citizen for simple choice, is crude and
insufficiently effective:
What if options offered do not provide for the citizen's needs/desires?
In order not to lose opportunities, the provider must respond "on demand"
of the citizen, where the nature of the demand can be captured by simulations
around what is conceivable and possible.
Responding to citizen's initiative for defining options is the second dimension
of Conversations for Design.
Harnessing the citizen's initiative demands a new response.
Demand-Activated Production is a production mechanism for harnessing that
initiative:
responding to immediate demand
eliminating/lowering levels of inventory
exchanging uncertainty of need (which leads, e.g., to need for inventory)
for certainty of responsiveness
can be implemented now:
delays in current system are caused by decision process, revealing
limits of the social structure not limitations inherent in production
free switching provides the means to eliminate some 95% of delays in current
decision system
Software techniques can support citizen initiatives in co-design with producers.
