# Factory or managed services

A company is one of two kinds. Its kind decides what clients, sites and shipping mean.

| | Factory | Managed services |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Clients | One: the company itself | Many: the customers it serves |
| Sites | Its floors and areas | Its clients' locations |
| SSUs | Its machines, lines and cells | The assets it maintains at clients' sites |
| Stock leaves by | Shipping to **customers** (off-system, or other EightyOne companies) | Being moved to client sites (installed), never shipped |
| Typical work | Work orders, operations, counts, quality, maintenance | Service and maintenance visits, installs |

Both use the same tasks, task types, forms, storage and analytics. Shipments, customers and consigned stock exist only in factories.

## Partners

Two EightyOne companies can work together:

- **Handoffs:** send a task to a partner; they get their own copy, and its status flows back.
- **Partner deliveries:** goods travel with a handoff, or with a shipment to a customer that is an EightyOne company. They arrive in the partner's transit and are received there.
- **Data requests:** ask a partner for data (for example, a production record), which they release as a data package.

Each company keeps its own data. A partner sees only what was sent to it.