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Processes

By Process, we mean an activity that transforms inputs into outputs. The outputs might then become inputs to other processes, forming networks and chains. Those chains may be circular, where an output from one process becomes an input to another process that occurred previously in the same chain, supporting circular economies.

Process spans the Plan and Observation layers. I.e. intents, commitments, and economic events can all be connected to the same process as it moves through planning and observation.

See also Input-Process-Output in the introduction, Flows in Motion: Planning and Flows in Motion: Observation in the Diagram Explanations, Production examples, Planning examples, and Community planning and Regional analysis in the Scenario examples.

For example...

  • For example: a farming process takes compost, soil, seeds, water and human and mechanical work as inputs, and transforms them into grains, nuts, fruit, and vegetables. Those ingredients may go to kitchens that create dinners for people to eat. Some of those ingredients may be pared off in preparation, or spoil, or be left on plates. Those leftovers go into compost, which starts the process chain over from the beginning.

  • Or for a bad example: a CAFO (Confined Animal Feeding Operation) produces a lot of manure. They put manure into big lagoons, which drain into the water table, and come back up in people's drinking water, causing diseases, for which the people become inputs to hospital processes.

  • One of the inputs to the CAFO process is antibiotics. The animals are filled with antibiotics because they get sick in the CAFO environment. And the antibiotics are also an output, mixed in with the manure and meat.

  • The antibiotics then breed resistant bacteria, which end up in the people, and send them to the hospital, and then kill the people, because the common antibiotics no longer work. And the resistant bacteria remain in the hospital to kill other people.

Connected processes enable us to see cause and effect, if we want.

Process structures

Process-based flows can create "directed graphs" in infinite combinations.

process flows

Co-products and by-products

Usually processes have one output, but not always. Sometimes there are co-products that have somewhat equal value. Sometimes there are co-products that provide something useful, such as plastic shavings being put back into the melting pot for continued production as input. Sometimes there are unintended by-products, resources that are known but not useful or are harmful.

Valueflows does not distinguish between "good" and "bad" resources created by processes, as that is conditional and can be subjective. On the other hand, this pattern gives the opportunity to record and understand harmful "externalities" from producing and transporting resources.