1. An appliance for performing a useful cycle of operation on a physical article comprising: at least one control board having software architecture configured for communication on a network including other control boards or clients, and having a message architecture and at least one functionality associated with the cycle of operation from a universe of functionalities; wherein each functionality from the universe of functionalities is associated with a unique identifier, this unique identifier comprising an Application Programming Interface identifier (API ID), and wherein each API ID comprises one or more instances; wherein each instance of the at least one API ID on the network is associated with a dynamically assigned unique instance identifier; and wherein the message architecture includes at least one byte predefined to contain a unique API ID value and at least one byte predefined to contain a unique instance identifier value; the message being communicable over the network so that one instance of the at least one functionality is uniquely identifiable among more than one instance of the same functionality on the network.