Production

The Production state consists of building, marketing, and selling the product. The existence of the product affects nearly all aspects of the company's operations. The company's identity becomes strongly associated with this product. Concerns include:

• How many units per month will satisfy customer demand?
• How should the supply chain be arranged?
• How can the costs of inventory be controlled?
• What are the most efficient markets?
• What reliance should be placed on our sales force and that of resellers?

In our model, there is a 0.2 probability each quarter that a project will move from the Production state to the Maintenance state. There is a 0.3 probability that the project will move from the Production state back to the Design state. There is a 0.5 probability that the project will remain in the Production state. This indicates a rather strong concern for using customer feedback to implement design changes. Our model does not reflect a possibility that a project may be permanently abandoned in the Production stage. We do not suddenly stop Production and leave our customers in the lurch!

If the Coupling From The Past algorithm results in the Production state, this means that the Production state always occurred at time t=0, regardless of what states occurred at any time in the past.