Back to the Toyota illustration... now that Toyota has all these parts engineered to be assembled into any Toyota and have pre-fabricated them and have them in inventory before they get any orders... how does Toyota "cost-justify" those parts? They don't have any orders so there is no revenue. They are not making any money... they are not saving any money in the current accounting period. 

WOW! We have been Zachman Certifying so many people these last 2 months, I feel like I have been on the road non-stop! Sorry to take so long with this next part of the blog!

Go back to the Toyota illustration... I want to develop a pattern, a Strategy Pattern, for you. I am sure it is a universal pattern. I use Manufacturing, tangible products, because they are easier to conceptualize than intangible products like services but I am sure this is a universal pattern

Initially, the customer is willing to accept these limitations... they don't know any better. But, over long periods of time, 50 or a hundred years, they get frustrated and the drive the manufacturer out of a Job Shop into a Standard Production Environment (mass production) in order to solve the problems. Actually, the problem is the strategy. 

My goodness! Cort and I have been teaching non-stop! We have Zachman Certified just over 65 people in the last month!

OK, on with this blog...

Clearly, you have to change the strategy... to an Assemble-to-Order strategy... Mass-Customization, "custom products, mass-produced in quantities of one for immediate delivery"... but this is a completely different kind of a business.

My goodness! I'm so sorry to take so long with another blog! I'll bet this year is the most people we have Zachman Certified ever! HUNDREDS of folks this year so far!

In the Information Age, the characteristics we understand to date are complexity and change. The customer wants a product specific to his or her specification... a custom product. The customer is a market of one. And, the customer may not even know what they want until they want it and then they want it now... immediately. And, if you can't produce to those requirements, click! 

Architecture: AbstractionsYou can classify the set descriptive representations of anything (buildings, airplanes, locomotives, battleships, computers, etc.) in a two dimensional classification structure, a "schema". 

Architecture is a SET of Descriptive Representations.

I the object you are trying to create is simple, you can see the whole thing at the level of definition required to create it ... like a log cabin ... or a computer program ... you don't need Architecture. All you need is a tool, like an axe of a compiler or something and some raw material like a forest, or some data or something, and some time, then build log cabins or write computer programs.

I'd like to put some posts together about what I think "The New Paradigm" for Enterprise Architecture is. I will break this up into 5 or 6 blogs that deal with this in terms of Enterprise Architecture expenses vs. assets, cost justification of Enterprise Architecture, providing from stock vs assemble-to-order strategies, mass-customization of EA and some cultural implications of this new paradigm. 

One of the factors that made Walmart dominant in the market and enabled them to change the "core logistic" of the industry was their ability to customize their local stores to the local market, maintain inventory and build customer relationships. Power shifted to the customer. 

Relative to Dewey's conceptual innovations, in addition to his observation that the secret to the whole thing lies in the coding and classification of the data, Dewey identified and formalized the Process orientation in the late '60s long before Mike Hammer and Jim Champy popularized the concepts of Process Reengineering in their 1993 book. 

Welcome to my blog!

I am very excited about the new developments in The Zachman Framework 3.0 and Zachman International! We have spent the last couple years "underground" refining our research, developing several new programs, forging new relationships, developing the community of practice and getting zachman.com ready for prime time! Well, the time is finally here to start rolling these things out!