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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