Topological Surgery

One of the strengths of viewing functions as part of systems is the potential to perform "topological surgery". Not so much cutting things out as re-arranging them. By re-arranging elements within a system better performance can be created. This may be as simple as improving ergonomics or reducing losses by shortening cables, or improving reliability by separating heat generators from the heat sensitive. Such changes are quite likely to offer what everyone wants...lower cost products. (Higher reliability gets traded for cheaper components!)

But another kind of rearrangement is possible, a rearrangement where the myriad of components in a product may be grouped into modules. What for? ...Servicing!...and its admirable pre-emptive brother,.. Maintenance. These old-fashioned ideas have been lost in the rush to reduce the costs of individual products. ("This product contains no user serviceable parts.) But here's an interesting thing. It is often the desire of modern electronic engineers to get an IC made that integrates the function of two or more other ICs or semiconductor components. One bigger part should be cheaper than the two separate parts that make it up, and anyway there's less to assemble. In fact, more often than not the two separate parts are the cheaper solution, because they're more general purpose and therefore sell in much greater volume. If we modularize our products with care we might be able to identify and share some modules between product, thereby pushing their volume up and their cost down.

But maintenance is the biggest key of all..

Once we have modules...some of these might become infra-structure