Analysis of Industry Standards Protocol
Introduction
The best starting point for building any device or machine is to study what has been done already: history, prior art (patents), and industry standards.
It is an assumption of OSE that here are no inventions, but only small incremental developments on a large, existing pool of knowledge. These are known as innovations.
In order to create an innovative design, it is critical to have a deep understanding of the designs and mechanisms that are in common use - such as in products that are available on the open market. The critical enabler of open innovation is documentation of what has already been done.
History and Industry Standards include:
- History - what has been done already? What is the first ever working example of the artifact?
- Prior Art - patents are an official record of innovations' descriptions
- Study of Industry Standards - What kind of features and performances are common in commercially-available, mainstream products? These may not necessarily be desirable, but it is important to understand why they exist.
- Comprehensive listing of mechanisms or designs that are in common use today, as well as listing of lesser known designs
- Explanation of the key features of each design
- Analysis of performance to cost ratio for each machine or component. This should be expressed as cost per unit of performance, such as: cost per kW of power generated, cost per throughput of production, etc.
The analysis of history and industry standards is a good starting point for a Modules Breakdown Diagram, and for extracting working mechanisms for a Tech Tree of Choices.
Protocol
- Use Study of Industry Standards Template - make a copy of it for your use.
- Research the machine or module on the internet. Document in Template.
- Publish on the wiki and link in your Work Log.