Assembly Line Tutorial - Part 2

Lets's try a slightly more complex product. We'll need about $15,000 in cash to get started with this, so keep selling Phunky Phrisbees until you have that much.

Go to the Products page and take a look at the Mojo Mallet. This product was originally developed for the Ukranian Croquet Club, who are take their croquet very seriously. It has a high-strength verdium-ruddium alloy head, and a resilient easy-grip handle. Since its initial launch in the Ukraine, a considerable demand for it has arisen worldwide, so we're going into mass production.

This product consists of two parts, a 12x6 head and a 2x20 handle. The handle is easy, because it's a standard sheet size, but we'll have to cut the head out of a larger sheet.

Before we get started, it'll be a good idea to open a new factory to make this product. This will allow us to see the income and expenses for the two products separately, so we can tell how well they're going.

Opening a New Factory

Go to the Factory page and click on the triangular button in the top right corner. This brings up a window showing a list of all the existing factories you have. There's only one at the moment. Before adding another one, let's rename the first one so we'll be able to tell them apart. Type "Phunky Phrisbee" into the text box at the bottom and press Enter.



Now click the Open New Factory button. A new factory appears in the list, already selected. Type "Mojo Mallet" into the Name box and press Enter.



When you've got things right, press Enter or click outside the window to dismiss it.

You can use this window to switch between factories at any time by selecting the factory you want from the list. Shortcut: Double-clicking on a name in the list selects the factory and closes the window.

Building the Factory

Now we're ready to start putting the factory together.

Punching the Head

Start with a supply hopper near the bottom left corner of the factory. Set it to deliver 20x10 sheets of R3G12 (the composition of the head). Build a conveyor out from it far enough to reach a punch.


Add a Punch and set it to punch out 12x6 rectangles. Build a conveyor to take the parts produced by the punch, and add a Recycle Bin to catch the waste.


Supplying the Handles

Now add a second supply hopper, positioned so that there are exactly 2 squares of space between the bottom of the new hopper and the top of the previous conveyor. Set it to supply 2x20 sheets of R11.
Build a conveyor out to the same distance as the last one.


Assembling Parts

We'll use an Assembly Robot to put the parts together. Position it between the top two conveyors, to the right of the punch.



Before going any further, it's instructive to run the factory at this point and see what happens. The Assembly Robot waits for a part to arrive on the upper conveyor, picks it up and moves it around to the lower conveyor. Then it waits for a part to arrive on the lower conveyor, joins them together, and drops the assembled part back on the conveyor.



You'll notice that the result doesn't look quite right. To get a better look, extend the middle conveyor a bit further, add a QC station, and configure it to inspect Mojo Mallets. Wait for the QC station to reject a part, then click on the QC station with the inspection tool and go to the Inspection page.




It's rather a mess, because the robot has joined the the parts together in the wrong position. Pixels where the handle overlaps the head have got munged together, turning them yellow.



To fix this, we need to configure the X Offset and Y Offset of the assembly robot. These govern the position of the part from the upper conveyor relative to the one from the lower conveyor. Our parts need to be joined like this, so we need to set the X Offset to 5 and the Y Offset to 6.



Now run the factory again, and you should get a much better result. All you need to do now is add a packing station and you can start earning some income.


Factory Report

Go to the Reports page and select the Factory report. This shows many of the same figures as the Financial report, but only for the selected factory.

You'll find that the profit margin on the Mojo Mallet is rather slim. But we can do better, because we're not doing things very efficiently at the moment -- we're wasting a large part of each R3G12 sheet.

Reducing Wastage

If you've been running for 6 months or so, a couple of new machine types should be available by now. We can use them to improve the efficiency of our Mojo Mallet factory.

First, reconfigure the lower Supply Hopper so that it delivers 40x10 sheets. Also, change the Supply Rate to 4 sheets per day. That's because we're going to make 3 heads out of each sheet, so we want to supply head material at 1/3 the rate of the handle material.


Transverse Saw

Move the Punch and Assembly Robot, and the other machines to the right of them, along to make room for another machine between the Supply Hopper and the Punch.  Place a Transverse Saw there.


The Transverse Saw cuts a sheet crosswise into pieces. It needs to be configured with the width of the piece to cut off, and the direction that the sheet will be moving under the machine. Set the Cut Width to 12 and the direction to the right.



The saw will keep cutting pieces off the sheet as long as there is enough material left. Any piece left over that is too small gets shunted off down the chute at the top, so you'll want a Recycle Bin there. Press the R key while using the Add tool to rotate the Recycle Bin so that it's horizontal instead of vertical.

Something to be aware of is that the saw blade makes a 1 pixel wide cut. So we're cutting off a width of 13 pixels each time (12 + 1). We can do this 3 times with each 40-wide sheet, leaving an offcut 1 pixel wide. You will probably want to position a Recycle Bin above the saw, under its chute, to catch these.

The complete factory should now look something like this:



Run the factory now and watch what happens. Each sheet of head material should get saw into three pieces, each of which passes on to the Punch and gets used in the rest of the process as before.

However, all is not well. It may seem to be going all right at first, but if you run it for long enough, you'll find that things periodically get out of step, so that a handle doesn't quite arrive in time for the Assembly Robot to pick it up, causing one of the head pieces to get missed and go on to the QC station, which rejects it. You may also see a head piece and a finished mallet go past the QC station at once, which will confuse it and cause it to reject both parts.

The reason for this is that the head pieces are no longer being delivered at a constant rate, but in bursts of three as they come out of the saw. To fix this, we need another type of machine -- the Storage Hopper. If it doesn't appear on the Machines page, run for another couple of months until it becomes available.

Storage Hopper

Move the Punch, Assembly Robot and following machines another 3 squares to the right. Also split the lower conveyor in two just after the Transverse Saw and move the left part, together with the lower Supply Hopper, two squares upwards, so that you have the following configuration. Remember to add a Conveyor Drive for the new stretch of conveyor.



Now place a Storage Hopper into the space you've created, so that the left part of the conveyor leads into the top of it, and the right part of the conveyor leads out from below.



The Storage Hopper functions as a temporary storage area. It holds whatever parts fall into the top, and releases them from the bottom at a constant rate.

Configure the Storage Hopper to deliver parts at a rate of 12 per day:



The Storage Hopper has a maximum capacity of 10 parts, and a level gauge that shows you how full it is. If it overflows, parts will start falling messily on the ground in front, although that shouldn't happen here if you have everything set up properly.

Run the factory now, and things should be much improved. The Assembly Robot will be supplied with both heads and handles at a steady rate, allowing it to do its job without making any mistakes. Watch the Factory Report while running for another two or three months and you should see that you're making a much healthier profit on Mojo Mallets.

Researching New Products

While you'll be able to continue selling these two products for some time, you won't be able to go on forever -- eventually the market for them will become saturated. Before that happens, it's wise to invest some of your profits in developing new products.

Go to the Company page and select the Research subpage.



Currently there is nothing being spent on research. Select the Supa Slice line and click the Settings... button at the bottom.



The initial research budget is a suggested figure; you can increase it to get the product developed faster, or reduce it if you're not in such a hurry. However, there are diminishing returns -- spending twice as much per month won't get it done in half the time.

When you've settled on a research spending rate that you're comfortable with, click OK. Now it's just  a matter of running your factories (hopefully with a positive balance of earnings) until development of the product is complete. The product will then appear on the Products page and elsewhere, and you can start building a factory to manufacture it. Also, another new product will appear in the Research list for you to start developing.

Material and Machine Stocks

There are two remaining subpages on the Company page that we haven't looked at yet.

The Materials subpage shows a list of materials that have been purchased but not used yet.



If you find yourself with a stock of material that you're not going to use, or you're running short of cash, you can select it and use the Sell button to sell some of it for its scrap value. You choose how many sheets to sell, and are told how much you'll get for them.



The Equipment subpage shows you machines that you've purchased but are not currently using in any factory. When you use the Remove tool on the Factory page to remove a machine that you've already purchased, it gets put on this list. When you add a machine to a factory, and there's already one of that type here, it gets taken off the list and put into the factory instead of a new one being purchased.



You can select a machine type here and use the Sell button to sell some of them for their second-hand value. This is somewhat less than the purchase price, so unless you're short of cash, it's better to keep surplus machines in case you want to use them later.


Further Reference

That's the end of this tutorial. More machine types will become available during play; details of them, and any other features not covered here, can be found in the Reference Manual.

It's over to you now. Good luck, and enjoy your career as a FADE!
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