RFC: Introduction of a Classification System for Products, Services, and Industry

[4lm]

Introduction

Current economic regulatory bodies use different classification systems for products, services, and industry (companies) to improve interaction with the economic actors within their sphere of influence. This proposal suggests introducing a classification system into our project. The goal is to reduce global work time spent on administrative purposes, allowing work time to be allocated more productively. Additionally, the introduction of a classification system aims to enhance planning, transparency, and decision-making while minimizing friction with external systems.

Example

The European Union, for example, has a publicly available classification system, that is based on the internationally acknowledged Nice Classification, and used for trade and trademark purposes. This system comprises 45 classification categories which group over 80,000 distinct types of products and services. Similar systems are used for taxation, trading, and other purposes, all around the world [1], [2].

Please note: the above-mentioned classification systems are just real-world examples; more research is required before a concrete implementation of a classification system into our project can be provided.

Proposal

Introducing a classification system into our project would offer several benefits:

1. Improved Planning for Companies:

   • Companies can better plan by looking up the goods and services needed for their production.
   • They can also see average work time costs for products or services (if previously offered).

2. Enhanced Research Opportunities:

   • Companies can research current demand using the classification system, aiding in planning and strategy development.

3. Simplified Search for Workers:

   • Workers can easily find the products and services they need by searching within categories.

4. Increased Transparency in the Supply Chain:

   • The entire supply chain becomes more transparent, aiding decision-making across various stages of production and distribution.

5. Cost Savings in Development:

   • Furthermore, basing our classification system on a publicly available classification system provides use with ever evolving translations for dozens of languages for category, title, and description and other metadata. This results in significant work time savings.

6. Becoming a Real-World Actor:

   • In addition, basing our classification system on a publicly available classification system would also help us to better interact with the existing regulatory and economic systems that surround us. Resulting in less work time for the people using our system.

Next Steps

This RFC is intentionally abstract as further research & discussion is needed before implementation. Suggested steps:

1. Discussion:

   • Evaluate the proposal's merits and gather feedback.

2. Timeline:

   • Establish a timeline for when to initiate work on this project.

3. Research & Planning:

   • Begin research and development planning

4. Implementation:

   • Start an MVP implementation of our classification system. Incrementally improve from here, as usual.

Conclusion

Implementing a classification system for products, services, and industry could significantly reduce regulatory and opportunity work time for all the actors in our economic work time system, while also enhancing transparency and decision-making. A well-structured classification system is essential for enabling our project to fulfill its promise of accurate working time calculation and effective resource management.

Additional Note

No worries, I'm aware that I'm quite active concerning new RFCs at the moment. I think it is important to be transparent and to get new ideas, which might be worth discussing, out there. I'm fully aware that a topic like this RFC is not something that can be tackled instantly, and even discussing it might take a while.

Nevertheless, I'm happy about any input.

[seppeljordan]

My understanding is that this topic is outside of the scope of the arbeitszeitapp.

[sloschert]

Thanks for raising this issue. We discussed this topic only superficially so far.

Currently I am hesitating for several reasons, but I have to think more about it - and we should discuss it.

My concerns have to do with the prescriptive nature this implementation would have on arbeitszeitapp instances. One could argue that this app should only model the core accounting system, while providing api interfaces for surrounding, more specialised ecosystems (that deal e.g. with product classification and presentation).

On the other hand one could argue that classification of products and services is such an universal concept that it could be considered a core functionality of the accounting system, without being harmful.

[Amittai-Aviram]

I like this proposal! But — to elaborate a bit on Jordi's response — it presupposes the integration of the narrow accounting-oriented "core" of the Arbeitszeitapp with a broader concern with modeling and supporting a labor-time-based economy as a whole. So this is the question that we need to decide: do we go narrow or broad? If we go narrow, then the categorization of goods and services probably belongs to some other app. I say probably because, as Sepas suggests, perhaps it could even benefit the user's experience of the narrower account-oriented app.

Now, all that said, I am still a little fuzzy on the rationale. How exactly does the categorization of goods and services improve business efficiency? Maybe this rationale is so well explained elsewhere that this RFC just presupposes familiarity with the arguments — but, alas, for me, the connection is not totally obvious.

[4lm]

Thanks for commenting on this RFC.

Now, all that said, I am still a little fuzzy on the rationale. How exactly does the categorization of goods and services improve business efficiency? Maybe this rationale is so well explained elsewhere that this RFC just presupposes familiarity with the arguments — but, alas, for me, the connection is not totally obvious.

I can't name any scientific business studies that answer this question, but I can point to any online system that handles consumption from a worker (d2c/b2c) or company (b2b) perspective. If they have any scope, any of them have a classification system which materializes as a category system. For B2C you can take Amazon, eBay or JD (China) or any business platform that brings buyers and sellers together (please compare with this listing of b2b trading platforms https://www.kyto.com/platform-engine/platforms/).

But before we can talk about "if" and if so "how and when" to implement a classification system, I think, as we realized in our last dev meeting, we should first define the scenario(s) and scope we see for this project (you might call it "the vision"). Because I think, as of now, because we lack a clear definition what this project is and what it is not, everyone might have a different understanding of the vision for this project.