Define the Substances and Fields Resources (SFR) of the analyzing system, the environment, and the product. Compose a list of SFR.
20. Substance and Field Resources (SFR) there are substances and fields that already exist or may be easily obtained according to the problem conditions. There are three types of SFR:
1. System (internal) resources:
a) SFR of the tool;
b) SFR of the
product.
2. Available (external) resources:
a) SFR of the environment that are particular for the problem conditions, for instance, in the problem about small particles in an optically clean liquid, water is SFR;
b) SFR common for any environment, including "background" fields, for instance gravity and magnetic field of the Earth.
3. SFR of the
super-system:
a) waste materials of some outside system (if available according problem conditions);
b) very cheap outside resource, which cost may be ignored.
During solving a Mini-Problem it is
necessary to achieve needed result with minimum expenditure of SFR. Therefore,
the utilization of internal (system) SFR should first be considered. However,
when it is necessary to develop solution concepts and/or solve problem about
forecasting (i.e., Maxi-Problems), the maximum of various SFR should be
considered.
21. It is known that the product is the unchangeable element - so what kinds of resources can be it has? Indeed the product can not be changed, i.e. it is unsuitable to change product while solving the Mini-Problem. However, sometimes the product can:
a) change itself;
b) allow consumption (i.e. modification) of part, when the product amount is unlimited (for instance, wind etc.);
c) allow transition to the super-system (for instance, brick has not changed, but house has changed);
d) allow application of micro-level structures;
e) allow being combined with "nothing", i.e. with void;
f) allow temporary modification.
Therefore, the product can be considered as SFR only in rare cases if product can be easily modified "without modification".
22. The
SFR are available resources and thus they should be utilized first. If there are
not enough available resources other substances and fields can be considered.
The analysis of SFR in step 2.3 is preliminary.
Example:
In the problem about protection of antenna the "absent lightning conductor" is considered. Therefore the SFR contain only substances and fields of environment. In this case SFR this is the air.
[1] Comment by Nikolai Khomenko: We do not have to list all substance and fields. It is enough to list just objects with different nature. It is a good idea to compare several problems and find resources that play important role in several problems. And choose first of all resources that appear in most of the known problems that connected to current problem.