Factories, produce goods! Wow news flash, great guide, rate it 10/10! Nothing you didn't know but... depending on what goods you want to make, you'll want a suitable sized factory. If you only want to make one production line of French fries, you don't need a large factory with lots of space, a small one will do. It's important to think first of what you want to do with a factory before renting/purchasing the warehouse.
Because you'll regret getting a small warehouse when you need to put lots of machines down to make the products you want!
You can check the factory recipe list or the ingame F1 help menu, to see what machines you need to produce the goods you want, or use the factory builder for a full list of items!
2# Rent/purchase a warehouse = factory:
We are gone start with the first requirement a warehouse that functions as a factory! You don't have to look at the traffic index of a warehouse, that doesn't matter for warehouses/factories. There are different types of warehouses though, they differ in size, vehicle bays and layout. So pay very good attention to what type of warehouse you want to build your factory in.
On Voogle maps you can enable this filter to show all the locations.
They are located in Garment, Lower Manhattan and Murray Hill district a block above where the piers are.
You then will see them popup on your map with a brown glow to it.
Once you found your suitable warehouse, with the layout and driver bays you prefer and within your budget! You can go ahead and rent or purchase the building if you have the cash! Once you rented/purchased the warehouse do not forget to start a business and select the business type Factory!
You now have an empty factory building!
3# Getting the machines and what do they do
3.1# Where to get the machines?
To purchase the factory machines you'll have to go to the only specific store that sells them. That is the Factory Supply Depot(57 5th Avenue) in Lower Manhattan. If you talked to the manager in the store before, you can just order equipment by calling him during opening hours. If it's your first time, you'll have to go talk to the manager first during opening hours. Or manually grab the boxes of machines you want and go to a register to pay for them ofcourse. You can check the prices and what goods the machines produce in the factory machine list to make sure you aren't buying the wrong machine or the factory builder page. Make sure you have enough money for them, to save you the dissapointment of going there and not being able to buy them, machines cost allot of money and is definably something you'll build up gradually!
Factory Supply Depot(57 5th Avenue)
Remember a factory will require quite some machines and shelves depending on what you want to build. It might be better to talk or call the manager and have the items delivered to the delivery pallet in your factory the next day than buying/moving the items manually to your factory, as that can be quite time consuming and a hassle!
If you have sufficient funds you can make use of the templates at the Interior Installation Firm or one of your own or communities’ blueprints. You’ll have to go to Kristian Bahood(2 1st avenue.) All the way in the top right corner of the map if you look from the piers. You can also go on Voogle maps and click the Interior Installation Firm filter on.
Once there talk to one of the managers at the desks. If you have done this before you can simply call the office during opening hours and don’t have to drive to them. Select your warehouse and the style you want the interior to be and choose installation date. The warehouse will then have a complete interior when they are done building it for you. The prices for this are very expensive though, so not something you’ll be able to do when you just start the game.
3.2# What do the machines do?
3.2.1# Input and output stations
The machines you'll definably need are input and output stations. As the name says it, input stations will bring items from your shelves on the conveyor belts towards the machines that produce your items. The output stations will take the produced items from the conveyor belt and put them in boxes to store them on your shelves. They look very similar but when you place them down the placement arrows will point in the direction the conveyor belt goes. If it goes towards the machine it's an output station, away from the machine it's an input station. You can visually see the yellow arrow conveyor belt indicators also in what direction they will move the goods.
The input and output stations will also be the only machines that will require factory workers to be operated! The other factory machines are operated automatically. So you can count quite easily how many factory workers you'll need to work in your factory.
3.2.2# Conveyor belt and splitter
You can connect the input and output stations directly to the machines, but sometimes you'll need bigger conveyor belt lines to place things nicely together in your factory.
For that we have:
the conveyor belt
and conveyor splitter item.
Conveyor belts can be placed to go left/right or up/down in direction, they can not go diagonally. Conveyor belts will respond to the direction you point them. As you can see on the little snake in the picture they will corner and direct the flow of goods towards the direction of your placement.
The conveyor splitter will take one line and split the goods into 2 seperate lines. This can be useful to distribute the goods of an input station or machine to 2 different machines saving you an extra input station and factory worker for example!
Pay close attention to the direction you put your belts, one wrongly placed belt will disrupt the entire line, like this example:
3.2.3# Production machines
Then you have the actual production machines!
Depending on what products you want to make you'll need specific type of machines and possibly multiple machines to make the products you want!
When you place down a machine you will see blue arrows going towards the machine, thats where the goods need to go that the machine needs to produce. The orange arrow is where the produced product will go out of. Some machines can have more then one input as they require lots of goods to produce their product. As you can see on an example here, you can have 1 input but also 2,3,4 and even 5 for the complicated products!
Make sure to use factory recipe list, to see what machines you need to produce what product. Or use the factory builder for a full list of machines!
3.2.4# Storage for all your items and products
To store all the products you gone produce, but also the items you'll need to buy to make the products you want you'll need storage! There's 2 options for that, you have the normal shelves or pallet shelves. It is advised to use the pallet shelves as they can hold 60 boxes, the normal shelves only 16 boxes.
the Storage Shelf
and Pallet Shelf item.
4# Hiring factory workers
You need factory workers to handle the input and output stations in your factory. Withouth them nothing will be produced. Now to get a factory worker you’ll have to use the services from the Anderson Recruitment agency located 16 5th Avenue. If you have been there before you can call him through your phone during opening hours. Don’t forget you can use the filters on Voogle maps to highlight the recruitment agency buildings in the city.
Or if you have a headhunter assigned in your headquarters you can use him to find you a suitable factory worker in the Candidates list in your MyEmployees app. Make sure he’s also connected to an HR manager if you have one assigned in your headquarters so your factory worker can be replaced when he's sick or goes on pension.
Once you have them recruited and assigned to your factory you'll need to go to 'BizMan' > 'Schedule' and drag them in the open slots for the input/output stations.
5# At least one purchase agent working in a headquarter office
You know got your machines and storage shelves down, ready to setup a production line! But you will need ingredients to make the products you want! You can get those by contacting the right importer!
Rent the office building and start a new Business make sure to select: Headquarters as the type.
Now the purchase agent will need an employee work station to work. Like the customer service people need a register and the cleaners a cleaning station. For a purchase agent this means you’ll need to setup an office desk, a chair and a computer for them to sit at. Some of the purchase agents can ask for specific desks or chairs to sit at. But if they don’t, any desk or chair will do.
Make sure to set an extra desk, chair and computer in your headquarters for your logistics manager as he also will need a place to work!
Now you got his work station ready, but you didn’t recruit him yet! To recruit a purchase agent, you’ll need to make use of the second recruitment agency called City Workforce INC located 41 4th avenue. Once there talk to any employee seated at their desk to start a recruitment campaign. If you have been there before and started up a recruitment campaign you can call him through your phone during opening hours. Don’t forget you can use the filters on Voogle maps to highlight the recruitment agency buildings in the city.
Or if you have a headhunter assigned in your headquarters you can use him to find you a suitable purchase agent in the Candidates list in your MyEmployees app. Make sure he’s also connected to an HR manager if you have one assigned in your headquarters so your purchase agent can get trained so he can negotiate cheaper prices and be able to get health insurance when he demands it.
Drag him from the scheduler in any available workstation space in your headquarters and he’s ready to work!
6# Setting up purchase agent mechanics
The first step was you deciding on what products you want to produce so you can deliver those to your businesses. We have 7 importers in the city and the range of products they offer is very different! So, make sure to pay them a visit at the following addresses. (You can also right click on their building and browse their inventory)
Now for the factories, you only want to go to these 3 importers really:
Aquatic Bay Cargo (8 Pier), this one sells ingredients used for drinks and tabacco products.
Maritime Freight Line (7 Pier), this one sells ingredients for electronics, clothing, jewellery and gifts.
Lunar Tide Shipments (6 Pier), this one sells ingredients related to the food industry
Importers
Aquatic Bay Cargo
Maritime Freight Line
Lunar Tide Shipments
Pier 8
Pier 7
Pier 6
Products
Barley
Battery
Baking Mix
Blue Agave
Capacitors
Cheese
Carbon Dioxide
Clay
Dough
Cigar Paper
Copper Clad Laminate
Bag of Lettuce
Cigarette Paper
Fabric (Cheap)
Ground Beef
Cola Flavoring
Fabric(Expensive)
Chicken Breast
Grapes
Glass
Raw Sausage
Ground Coffee Beans
Integrated Circuits
Milk
Hops
Metal Band
Pepper
Juniper Berries
Microphone
Russet Potatoes
Lime Juice
Plastic
Sugar
Orange Peels
Resistors
Cream
Tobacco
Speaker
Bag of Tomatoes
Vermouth
Transistors
Vinaigrette
Water
Uncut Gems (Cheap)
Onion
Yeast
Uncut Gems (Expensive)
Water
Once you decided what importer you want to use you’ll have to go to the importer and talk to the manager at the desk. Once you done this the importer will now also be a contact in your phone, so you don’t have to visit the importer every time you want to get a contract.
You talk to the manager and assign your purchase agent as the contract handler. Be aware a better trained purchase agent will be able to negotiate lower importing prices which can be useful to increase your profit margins!
Once assigned you open up Bizman and go to your headquarters and click on your purchase agent tab and click on the assigned purchase agent. You will now see a list of the available products you can get imported from your chosen importer. Do note a purchase agent can only handle 1 contract at 1 of the 4 importers at the same time. Meaning if you want importing contracts for all 4 importers you’ll need to hire 4 purchase agents
You’ll see a screen like this:
1.
If you wish to terminate the contract of that importer on that selected purchase agent you click that button. Obviously, any deliveries setup will be deleted if you do this.
2
This is where you can select the frequency of the import deliveries there’s 4 options:
One time : What you order will only be delivered once.
Auto-Stock every 1 day(s): The amount you set at # to buy / # target (5) will be checked every day against your warehouse stock (8) and the difference will be ordered.
Auto-Stock every 3 day(s): The amount you set at # to buy / # target (5) will be checked every 3 days against your warehouse stock (8) and the difference will be ordered.
Auto-Stock every 7 day(s): The amount you set at # to buy / # target (5) will be checked every 7 days against your warehouse stock (8) and the difference will be ordered.
3.
This will show you some important information:
Minimum order: Every importer has its own specific minimum order limit. If your order doesn’t reach the minimal minimum order he will not deliver your items!
Next Delivery: This will indicate the day and time he will deliver your orders if you meet the requirements.
Total: This will give you an indication of the total price of the ordered goods.
And then the actual button order, don’t forget to press this when you are done setting up the goods you want to purchase otherwise he will not import.
4.
Name of the items he offers to import to you.
5.
# to buy or # target the name of this column can change depending the frequency you choose in (2). For a one-time order this means he’ll purchase your amount of goods you entered. If you put it on an auto-restock frequency he’ll order the difference of the number you entered as # target(5) and the amount of warehouse stock(8) you have.
You can enter the amount by typing in the grey box or use the -/+ symbols to increase or decrease. Do note you are entering the amount of goods you want to order, not the amount of boxes!
6.
This will show the price of how many you are buying of the product and in brackets the price you pay for 1 product.
7.
Here you will select the warehouse where they have to deliver this product to. You can select multiple different warehouses for products offered by the same importer. So within one contract you can deliver to multiple warehouses.
8.
This will show you the warehouse stock of that product, so don’t forget to select a warehouse at point 7.
Sometimes you will see a triangle exclamation sign in front of a product.
this means you have a shortage of that product, the price to buy that good will increase allot.
Or you can have a circular exclamation sign in front of a product, this means there's a global product backorder as a consequence of that, they will not be able to make deliveries at all until the period of the backorder runs out(Usually 14 days). So make sure to stock up enough, to calculate for any misfortunes.
It’s important to know that all importers will have a minimum order fee or they will not ship your products. You can then select what product(s) you want to purchase and how many of them. Take note that the mentioned amounts are the amount of products and not the amount of boxes.
So, if you want to order 1.000 paper bags you have to enter 1.000 and not 1 as you are ordering the amount of goods not boxes of the product.
You can then choose if your purchase agent needs to make this a one-time purchase or if he has to repeat this order every 1/3/7 days. As long as your order will reach minimum order amount they will repeat and purchase your listed goods if you selected one of the three repeat order option.
You will see on this contract the option “One Time” is selected. This means if you reach the minimum order and clicked the green order button, the items mentioned in the # to buy column will be delivered on Day 102, 02:00. And it will only deliver this order once!
As mentioned you also have the option to choose auto-stock every 1, 3 or 7 days. This will then check how much warehouse stock you have against the number you put at # target every x amount of days you set it at. So as you see the “# to buy” column changed now into a “# target”.
Meaning if you have 2.000 pizza’s in the warehouse stock as the right column displays and the # target column is 3.000 pizza’s, it will order the difference being 1.000 pizza’s as you can see $ 2,56 a pizza x 1.000 = $ 2.558,60. But since that’s the only item that’s getting bought, my total order only costs $ 2.558,60 which is lower than the minimum order price of $ 4.000,00. Meaning it will not deliver those 1.000 pizzas as the order doesn’t meet the minimum total price.
This value is checked at 2 AM when they deliver your order. So just because this was the case when you pressed the green button order doesn’t mean that the order will actually go through at the moment you pressed the green order button. The actual inventory in your warehouse will be checked against the # target level at 2 AM if you then meet minimal order the products that aren’t stocked to the set # target level will be ordered and delivered to your warehouse.
ATTENTION: My import order didn't deliver to my warehouse?
If you don't have enough money for the order, the order will be cancelled. No goods will be deliverd, they don't deliver partial parts of your order. So either you can pay for the full order or they will not deliver any goods.
If you don't reach the minimal order price limit, the order also will be cancelled.
If you don't have enough pallet shelves in your warehouse to stock the items, the order will be cancelled.
7# Getting a delivery driver and a vehicle
The factory will need delivery drivers and vehicles, otherwise your produced goods aren't gone reach your businesses! Each driver bay will need a delivery driver. So simply said a small factory will need 1 and a big one 2 if you wish to use all 2 bays of the big factory.
Choosing a vehicle is very important because not all vehicles can provide to the same number of stores. The best vehicle would be the Freight Truck it can deliver standard to 4 locations and with a logistic manager of 100 % skill level they can go up to 8 locations. You will need a delivery driver with a minimum skill level of 75% though to be able to drive the Freight truck.
In general, there’s 4 categories of vehicles you want to keep in mind:
Category
Standard locations
100 % Logistic manager skill amount of locations
Driver % skill level needed
Freight Truck
4
8
75
Vord Courier D500
3
6
50
UMC Desert, UMC Nunavut, Vord V150
2
4
25
Every other vehicle
1
2
0
So, for a beginner it’s advised to start with a UMC Desert van as delivery vehicle. It’s a very cheap vehicle and offers lots of delivery locations when compared to the other vehicles. You can buy vehicles at the car dealerships on Voogle maps enable the filter or go to the following locations.
General Us Trucks (78 3rd street)(This one sells the UMC Desert Van, Vord Courier D500 and Freight Truck)
City Cars (76 3rd street)
Manhattan Luxury Cars (15 broadway)
Once you bought the vehicle you will have to drive it inside your factory in the driver bay and exit the vehicle. A message will appear in your top right corner that the vehicle is assigned to your factory.
That means you can now select your delivery driver to use that vehicle for his deliveries. So open BizMan, go to your factory and then the ‘Drivers’ tab. Drag one of your drivers to the Driver slot of the vehicle as below.
You now have a driver assigned to the UMC Desert van in this case. If you bought the Freight Truck and you can’t drag your driver into the driver slot this means he does not have a minimum of 75 % skill, so you will have to train him or replace him with a driver that has 75 % or more skill.
Now to get a driver you’ll have to use the services from the Anderson Recruitment agency located 16 5th Avenue. If you have been there before you can call him through your phone during opening hours. Don’t forget you can use the filters on Voogle maps to highlight the recruitment agency buildings in the city.
Or if you have a headhunter assigned in your headquarters you can use him to find you a suitable delivery driver in the Candidates list in your MyEmployees app. Make sure he’s also connected to an HR manager if you have one assigned in your headquarters so your delivery driver can get trained so he can maybe drive the Freight Truck if he’s not that skilled yet in the future!
8# At least one Logistic manager working in a headquarter office
To ship the produced goods out of the factory to your store you'll need a delivery route. A logistic manager will help you to setup your delivery routes from the factories to your stores. To do this you’ll have to go to your headquarters and click on one of your available logistic managers.
Or if you have a headhunter assigned in your headquarters you can use him to find you a suitable Logistics manager in the Candidates list in your MyEmployees app. Make sure he’s also connected to a HR manager if you have one assigned in your headquarters so Logistic manager can get trained so he can increase the amount of delivery locations your drivers can use and also for possible health insurance demands.
For the logistic manager this is especially useful for all vehicles as the amount of locations it can deliver will increase depending on his skill level.
For example:
If the Logistics Manager is under 25% skill, a freight truck will service 4 locations.
Under 50% skill, it can service 5 locations.
Under 75% skill, it can service 6 locations.
Under 100% skill, it can service 7 locations.
At 100% skill, it can service 8 locations.
Drag him from the scheduler in any available workstation space in your headquarters and he’s ready to work!
9# Setting up Logistic manager mechanics
To ship the produced goods out of the factory to your store you'll need a delivery route. A logistic manager will help you to setup your delivery routes from the factories to your stores. To do this you’ll have to go to your headquarters and click on one of your available logistic managers.
As you can see it will say Unassigned, click in that dropdown box and select your correct factory. Note that you can only connect 1 logistic manager per warehouse!
You will then see your slots, the assigned vehicles and drivers. If you have a small factory you will only see 1 slot. If you don’t see any vehicle or driver assigned to the slot, you will not be able to do any deliveries to your own stores!
Now Press the ‘Add New Destination’ button:
You can then select your store or warehouse where your drivers need to deliver their goods. The amount of destinations you can have depends on the size of your warehouse, skill level of driver and logistical manager and assigned vehicles for your drivers as explained in the other sections more in depth.
1.
This column is the product column, it will show all the available products you can put in that type of store. If there’s a blue circle in front of it that means you are selling that item in your store. If you don't see an item you want in the list, you'll have to place the appliance/furniture item that sells it in your store, then it will also pop up in the list.
2
Second column shows you how many of that product you have in stock at your warehouse.
3.
This is where you set the minimum amount of stock the store where you deliver to has to have. In this case you can see pizza’s have a minimum stock amount of 500. So that means if in my store there’s only 100 pizza’s left, the delivery driver will bring 400 pizza’s to meet the minimum stock requirement of 500.
4.
Last column will give you an indication on how fast your current stock would run out as you can see with Paperbags my stock will last me 79 days. This can fluctuate heavily and I wouldn’t advice to look at it too much. Focus on setting your minimum stocks correctly so your store never runs out of supplies.
ATTENTION: My stores didn’t get any deliveries?
Do you have enough stock of the item(s) in the warehouse? If they don’t have the item(s) in stock they can’t deliver it to your store.
Make sure you have enough storage shelf spaces in your store for the boxes. If you want to deliver 1.000 expensive flowers to your store which would be 40 boxes(25 flowers per box), one storage shelf of a capacity of 16 boxes will not be enough.
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10# An actual factory production line
Lets setup an actual production line with the information we have now! Lets say you want to make your own French fries! You can then check in factory recipe list what machine you need to get. You can ofcourse also use the ingame F1 help menu and check the category 'Factory Recipes'.
French Fries need an Automated Frying machine and the input is one Raw Fries. Now the Raw Fries isn't an item you can buy from a store or importer! You will need to produce this yourself!
So when we check the recipe for Raw fries we need a Food Cutting Machine and that will use Russet Potatoes, which is an item we can buy from the importer Lunar Tide Shipments.
Meaning we'll need 2 production machines a Food Cutting Machine and Automated Frying Machine!
When you set the machines to their correct item you want them to produce, you can check the time it takes and how many items they output. This is useful information to optimise your factory with!
A simple production line would be the following:
This setup does require 2 input and 2 output stations, meaning 4 factory workers! You where probably thinking, can't you just connect those as one line manufacturing process? Yes, you can!
This saves you 1 input and 1 output station and the cost of 2 factory workers!
Now you might have noticed that the output of the Food Cutting Machine is 2 items per 5 minutes. Which means 1 Food Cutting Machine can supply 2 Automated Frying Machines as they take 8 minutes to produce one French Fries. So you can take the line production and further optimise this!
Now the real smart people probably had their calculator out and are like. The Food Cutting Machine is producing 24 Raw Fries per hour. 2 Automated Frying Machines will use 15 Raw Fries per hour, meaning there's a margin of 9 Raw fries per hour. If you put 3 Automated Frying Machines you need 22,5 Raw Fries per hour. So 22,5 < 24 Raw Fries, meaning you can add another Automated Frying Machine and increase the output of French Fries per hour!
The splitters divide 50/50, but if the line is full on one side it will move the product to the conveyor line with space. A working production will look something like this.
As you can see because you are producing 24 Raw Fries per hour and only use 22,5 Raw Fries per hour the conveyor belts are nicely backed up with product not creating gaps in the production ensuring a very cost effective and efficient production of French Fries. This can be tricky to achieve with longer lines for 1 machine then the other, creating gaps. Meaning you'll need some decent timing gap to take in the time on the conveyer belts into account alos. So it's best to first make sure all conveyor belts are filled and then start the machines to avoid gaps. It will take some experimenting to find the optimised way of doing it for sure!
11# F.A.Q
1. Can you sell your goods to other businesses or wholesalers?
- No you can not, you can only use them for your own stores.
2. Does the factory worker need to be in reach of a shelf?
- Yes! If he can't reach the shelf with products on it he can't fill the input station or move stuff from the output station.
3. Does the skill level of my factory worker matter?
- No, there is no distinguishment between a low skilled or high skilled factory worker. The high skilled factory worker will cost more hourly with 0 benefits to it.
4. Are the factory machines tax deductible?
- No, they are not tax deductible.
5. Can I work myself on the input and output stations, like you can on a register?
- No, you can not work yourself on an input or output station.
You now should have a good working Factory, congratulations!
They are located in Garment, Lower Manhattan and Murray Hill district a block above where the piers are.
You then will see them popup on your map with a brown glow to it.
Once you found your suitable warehouse, with the layout and driver bays you prefer and within your budget! You can go ahead and rent or purchase the building if you have the cash! Once you rented/purchased the warehouse do not forget to start a business and select the business type Factory!
You now have an empty factory building!
Remember a factory will require quite some machines and shelves depending on what you want to build. It might be better to talk or call the manager and have the items delivered to the delivery pallet in your factory the next day than buying/moving the items manually to your factory, as that can be quite time consuming and a hassle!
If you have sufficient funds you can make use of the templates at the Interior Installation Firm or one of your own or communities’ blueprints. You’ll have to go to Kristian Bahood(2 1st avenue.) All the way in the top right corner of the map if you look from the piers. You can also go on Voogle maps and click the Interior Installation Firm filter on.
Once there talk to one of the managers at the desks. If you have done this before you can simply call the office during opening hours and don’t have to drive to them. Select your warehouse and the style you want the interior to be and choose installation date. The warehouse will then have a complete interior when they are done building it for you. The prices for this are very expensive though, so not something you’ll be able to do when you just start the game.
The input and output stations will also be the only machines that will require factory workers to be operated! The other factory machines are operated automatically. So you can count quite easily how many factory workers you'll need to work in your factory.
and conveyor splitter item.
Conveyor belts can be placed to go left/right or up/down in direction, they can not go diagonally. Conveyor belts will respond to the direction you point them. As you can see on the little snake in the picture they will corner and direct the flow of goods towards the direction of your placement.
The conveyor splitter will take one line and split the goods into 2 seperate lines. This can be useful to distribute the goods of an input station or machine to 2 different machines saving you an extra input station and factory worker for example!
Pay close attention to the direction you put your belts, one wrongly placed belt will disrupt the entire line, like this example:
Depending on what products you want to make you'll need specific type of machines and possibly multiple machines to make the products you want!
When you place down a machine you will see blue arrows going towards the machine, thats where the goods need to go that the machine needs to produce. The orange arrow is where the produced product will go out of. Some machines can have more then one input as they require lots of goods to produce their product. As you can see on an example here, you can have 1 input but also 2,3,4 and even 5 for the complicated products!
Make sure to use factory recipe list, to see what machines you need to produce what product. Or use the factory builder for a full list of machines!
and Pallet Shelf item.
Or if you have a headhunter assigned in your headquarters you can use him to find you a suitable factory worker in the Candidates list in your MyEmployees app. Make sure he’s also connected to an HR manager if you have one assigned in your headquarters so your factory worker can be replaced when he's sick or goes on pension.
Once you have them recruited and assigned to your factory you'll need to go to 'BizMan' > 'Schedule' and drag them in the open slots for the input/output stations.
Rent the office building and start a new Business make sure to select: Headquarters as the type.
Now the purchase agent will need an employee work station to work. Like the customer service people need a register and the cleaners a cleaning station. For a purchase agent this means you’ll need to setup an office desk, a chair and a computer for them to sit at. Some of the purchase agents can ask for specific desks or chairs to sit at. But if they don’t, any desk or chair will do.
Make sure to set an extra desk, chair and computer in your headquarters for your logistics manager as he also will need a place to work!
Now you got his work station ready, but you didn’t recruit him yet! To recruit a purchase agent, you’ll need to make use of the second recruitment agency called City Workforce INC located 41 4th avenue. Once there talk to any employee seated at their desk to start a recruitment campaign. If you have been there before and started up a recruitment campaign you can call him through your phone during opening hours. Don’t forget you can use the filters on Voogle maps to highlight the recruitment agency buildings in the city.
Or you can have a circular exclamation sign in front of a product, this means there's a global product backorder as a consequence of that, they will not be able to make deliveries at all until the period of the backorder runs out(Usually 14 days). So make sure to stock up enough, to calculate for any misfortunes.
It’s important to know that all importers will have a minimum order fee or they will not ship your products. You can then select what product(s) you want to purchase and how many of them. Take note that the mentioned amounts are the amount of products and not the amount of boxes.
So, if you want to order 1.000 paper bags you have to enter 1.000 and not 1 as you are ordering the amount of goods not boxes of the product.
You can then choose if your purchase agent needs to make this a one-time purchase or if he has to repeat this order every 1/3/7 days. As long as your order will reach minimum order amount they will repeat and purchase your listed goods if you selected one of the three repeat order option.
You will see on this contract the option “One Time” is selected. This means if you reach the minimum order and clicked the green order button, the items mentioned in the # to buy column will be delivered on Day 102, 02:00. And it will only deliver this order once!
As mentioned you also have the option to choose auto-stock every 1, 3 or 7 days. This will then check how much warehouse stock you have against the number you put at # target every x amount of days you set it at. So as you see the “# to buy” column changed now into a “# target”.
Meaning if you have 2.000 pizza’s in the warehouse stock as the right column displays and the # target column is 3.000 pizza’s, it will order the difference being 1.000 pizza’s as you can see $ 2,56 a pizza x 1.000 = $ 2.558,60. But since that’s the only item that’s getting bought, my total order only costs $ 2.558,60 which is lower than the minimum order price of $ 4.000,00. Meaning it will not deliver those 1.000 pizzas as the order doesn’t meet the minimum total price.
This value is checked at 2 AM when they deliver your order. So just because this was the case when you pressed the green button order doesn’t mean that the order will actually go through at the moment you pressed the green order button. The actual inventory in your warehouse will be checked against the # target level at 2 AM if you then meet minimal order the products that aren’t stocked to the set # target level will be ordered and delivered to your warehouse.
ATTENTION: My import order didn't deliver to my warehouse?
General Us Trucks (78 3rd street)(This one sells the UMC Desert Van, Vord Courier D500 and Freight Truck)
City Cars (76 3rd street)
Manhattan Luxury Cars (15 broadway)
Once you bought the vehicle you will have to drive it inside your factory in the driver bay and exit the vehicle. A message will appear in your top right corner that the vehicle is assigned to your factory.
That means you can now select your delivery driver to use that vehicle for his deliveries. So open BizMan, go to your factory and then the ‘Drivers’ tab. Drag one of your drivers to the Driver slot of the vehicle as below.
You now have a driver assigned to the UMC Desert van in this case. If you bought the Freight Truck and you can’t drag your driver into the driver slot this means he does not have a minimum of 75 % skill, so you will have to train him or replace him with a driver that has 75 % or more skill.
Now to get a driver you’ll have to use the services from the Anderson Recruitment agency located 16 5th Avenue. If you have been there before you can call him through your phone during opening hours. Don’t forget you can use the filters on Voogle maps to highlight the recruitment agency buildings in the city.
As you can see it will say Unassigned, click in that dropdown box and select your correct factory. Note that you can only connect 1 logistic manager per warehouse!
You will then see your slots, the assigned vehicles and drivers. If you have a small factory you will only see 1 slot. If you don’t see any vehicle or driver assigned to the slot, you will not be able to do any deliveries to your own stores!
Now Press the ‘Add New Destination’ button:
You can then select your store or warehouse where your drivers need to deliver their goods. The amount of destinations you can have depends on the size of your warehouse, skill level of driver and logistical manager and assigned vehicles for your drivers as explained in the other sections more in depth.
French Fries need an Automated Frying machine and the input is one Raw Fries. Now the Raw Fries isn't an item you can buy from a store or importer! You will need to produce this yourself!
So when we check the recipe for Raw fries we need a Food Cutting Machine and that will use Russet Potatoes, which is an item we can buy from the importer Lunar Tide Shipments.
Meaning we'll need 2 production machines a Food Cutting Machine and Automated Frying Machine!
When you set the machines to their correct item you want them to produce, you can check the time it takes and how many items they output. This is useful information to optimise your factory with!
A simple production line would be the following:
This setup does require 2 input and 2 output stations, meaning 4 factory workers! You where probably thinking, can't you just connect those as one line manufacturing process? Yes, you can!
This saves you 1 input and 1 output station and the cost of 2 factory workers!
Now you might have noticed that the output of the Food Cutting Machine is 2 items per 5 minutes. Which means 1 Food Cutting Machine can supply 2 Automated Frying Machines as they take 8 minutes to produce one French Fries. So you can take the line production and further optimise this!
Now the real smart people probably had their calculator out and are like. The Food Cutting Machine is producing 24 Raw Fries per hour. 2 Automated Frying Machines will use 15 Raw Fries per hour, meaning there's a margin of 9 Raw fries per hour. If you put 3 Automated Frying Machines you need 22,5 Raw Fries per hour. So 22,5 < 24 Raw Fries, meaning you can add another Automated Frying Machine and increase the output of French Fries per hour!
The splitters divide 50/50, but if the line is full on one side it will move the product to the conveyor line with space. A working production will look something like this.
As you can see because you are producing 24 Raw Fries per hour and only use 22,5 Raw Fries per hour the conveyor belts are nicely backed up with product not creating gaps in the production ensuring a very cost effective and efficient production of French Fries. This can be tricky to achieve with longer lines for 1 machine then the other, creating gaps. Meaning you'll need some decent timing gap to take in the time on the conveyer belts into account alos. So it's best to first make sure all conveyor belts are filled and then start the machines to avoid gaps. It will take some experimenting to find the optimised way of doing it for sure!