During the setup of a pretty large layout, I was building the production cells for the different car parts (Hoods, Lights etc.), and connected them directly their fitting lines, eliminating the importing of the finished goods. Wherever I could, I added warehouses to create a “buffer”
That gave me the idea to be able to sell the overproduction of these parts, as an optional extra source of income + to make use of this overproduction.
If there would be a “Spare Part” unit, similar to the Export unit you can place at a export doorway (possible misnaming a few of these), and “supply” this unit through goods conveyors, you can sell your surpluss of car parts. With a possible addition of warehouse slots next to this Spare Parts unit. (Maybe even “special” Conveyors for in-house produced items which has been mentioned in a couple of other posts).
This can also give you the “challenge” to manage the supply of Car Lights in either your production line stockpile, and spare parts stockpile, with the risk of either crippling your production line while happily selling spare Car Lights, or the other way around.
Also a cool way to fill in a part of your factory where you don’t really need the space for your main production lines, Pop a Spare Parts Unit, a couple of Part production lines, and sell them.
Since the above is a pretty important part of the company i work for (We have production lines for different kinds of agricultural Robots), and the wearing parts, and consumable products are almost more important than the production of new machines.
Maybe even combine the info of sold parts within the cars you sell
Lights are on all cars, with a failure rate of a certain % (low) so the demand of Lights is like 1 set every couple of minutes in the beginning, since you only sold 50 cars at that point.
And once you fit cars with a certain extra option like Satnav (which could get stolen ), the counter starts, and the demand increases after that. This way you could “avoid” making it viable to build a Spare Parts factory.
And i agree that this should be “locked” behind a research tree.
Oh! and since i’m now in this train of thought… The Spare parts unit gathers parts, and selects them for selling, then sends them through a packaging unit, before leaving the factory through the Export slot
I’m not sure that this would make sense. Remember: Most parts of a car are either unique to the car or in best case used at different brands of the same company (e.g. as VW or PSA are doing) but never cross company.
The situation I can imagine such a ‘sell unfinished goods’ feature is after subassembling is implemented and you could accept contracts, like BMW is selling its enginges to small batch car manufacturers.
Sounds like an idea for the concept of part and process quality and the QA and rejection process. In that way it sounds interessting to me
But it happens as you see. Some things like motors, transmission/gearboxes etc are sold to other companies.
Of course it doesn’t make sense for every single component. I would only do it for things that make sense of course…
And I like the idea of making it contract based where smaller manufacturers approach you to order these components they need. That would actually be interesting in combination with AI controlled companies… where the major companies not only compete with one another for car designs, but also to sell their stuff to other smaller manufacturers.
), the counter starts, and the demand increases after that. This way you could “avoid” making it viable to build a Spare Parts factory.