Hey folks,
I played the ‘game’ several hours now but atm I’m not very happy with the way to create new models. For me it feels wrong to start the production process without knowing what the result should look like (and the QA Department could check). So here some suggestion related to this topic.
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the Marketing Department
This would be the place for me to create new models by selecting the basic car type (sedan, SUV, …), adding some enhancements like the light weight body and additional options like air conditioning, sun roof etc. It would be great if both - upgrading an existing model and making a complete new scratch - would be possible.
This would allow just adding additional stuff as well as selecting between options which exclude each other. One exampel at this point shall be the roof which can be either a standard roof, a sun roof or a panoramic sun roof - but never all at once.
This office should also allow the set a (maybe well sold) model to ‘obsolete’ so it can’t be selected for production and existing production orders will be cancelled and unsold cars will be scrapped/junked (after confirmation of course). -
BOMs and TLs
While creating a car model at the Marketing Dept. this should also create a Bill of Material (BOM) and the necessary Task List (TL) for the manufacturing process in background. The BOM would allow a overview of needed components and the material cost of a car model as well. The TL could give an overview of the available stations for each task so it would get visible which upgrade have to be done before making this car model. -
the POM
At this point - when after creating a car model with all its components and tasks - I’ld like to add a new slot to the production line: The Product Order Management. I would expect this new station to be available on starting a new game and to be the first slot of the whole line.
I can imagine that the slots of ‘models in production’ will be very limited (2 or 3) at the beginning but can be extended by upgrades to fit the requirements of various car types and asseccories per car type at the late game. To get a balance between different car models it’s necessary to set a weighting for each model.
When adding new car model to the line, I would prefer a short simulation of the production process for the selected model to ensure the line fits the requirements.
When running the production process this station would have to do the following tasks:
- getting an empty carrier
- prepare the papers/data transfer
- rolling out the prepared carrier
Because this station is part of the production but with one office tasks I would expect a desktop with terminal computer, a flip chart, printer and the conveyor for the carrier as well as someone who is doing this tasks. This could result into the following upgrades: - 2nd Desktop: enhances the performance for the second task
- better terminal computer: even more speed on the second task
- better printer: the third performance enhancement
- white board: allows to handle more models at the same time (e.g. +5 so it will allow 7 slots instead of jus 2 at the beginning)
- digital whiteboard: more model slots for the same production line (e.g. +10, resulting in a maximum of 17 diffent models at the same time for one produktion line)
- office plant: better motivation and health of the empoyees (at later game development?) or just to spent some money
So with this changes you could spot the production orders moving through the production line. It would allow to get some production information together, e.g. the running time each production taks (see Task List), total time for moving from slot to slot and total time for parking on a conveyor between two stations of the production line. The last point would provide a second point of view when hunting the bottleknecks and make some challenges (like pass every task in less than 4s) possible.
Regards
M!
EDIT:
This concept would make it necessary that tasks at a production slot can be skipped. E.g.: If the model has no air conditioning it either can pass the production slot on a bypass conveyor or just getting into the slot and just skipping the A/C fitting task.
This idea is relating to the ‘Model based routing’ thread: http://positech.co.uk/forums/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=54&t=17946
