How do I manage my produced items effectively?

[PieceOfPeace]

How do you do that with the items you produce? Let's take reinforced iron plates as an example. I have a working production chain for it to have some on hand when I want to build buildings. Now I want to produce an item that also requires reinforced iron plates. If I use the existing production chain, this will cause all the reinforced iron plates to be consumed.
Does it make sense to produce each item twice, once to fulfill requirements or to build buildings and once only for items to be produced?
Should I instead create the production chains in such a way that there is a surplus in each step of the production chain so that I can use resources for my own purposes if necessary?

[Deadly Peanut]

well, you could go for a walk and when you get back you'll have lots of the thing in storage and then you can do what you want :) just a thought

[Numbers]

I try to take each product from ore -> completion. That results in me having lots of duplicated production chains. Just personal preference though.

[Faustus]

You could use a spliter to send overflow to storage for your ad-hoc manual builds.

However, if the arithmetic tells you that your production line will use all the manufactured goods such that there will be no overflow then you might do one of the following:
- increase production through more machines or overclocking
- throttle back the machines using the particular manufactured resource depending on production requirements
- create a dedicated line for the manufactured goods you want to store.

I typically went with the first of these and the overflow just accumulated over time whilst I was exploring.

[Maehlice]

When dealing in small numbers, it's not a bad idea to make a factory take in ore(s)/ingot(s) and spit out something on the other end.

But, when you start dealing with the need for 1000's of ingots, that gets wicked cumbersome and confusing really fast.

It's generally easier to make a factory building doing nothing but _this_ and another nothing but _that_. When you need more of something, simply replicate what you've already done before (preferably vertically right on top of the old stuff). Unless you just want to mix things up for variety, don't reinvent the wheel.

I use Iron Wire and Stitched Plates, so my Reinforced Iron Plate factory takes in only ingots and spits out RIPs. It's more Iron efficient and is stupid simple to duplicate anywhere.

[Tankfriend]

Originally posted by Bloederkules:

Does it make sense to produce each item twice, once to fulfill requirements or to build buildings and once only for items to be produced?

If you regularly use up all of those stored materials, then yeah. But you'll rarely manage to do that, so you'd have a lot of production capacity uselessly standing around.

A better option would be to get smart splitters (Caterium research tree in the MAM), and use these to route the material from your first production lines into containers, and the overflow (in this case: everything, once the containers are full) towards the second production line.

That way, you get your container full of materials, and you minimize idle time of your factory.
The only downside is that if you take something out of the container, your second production line might potentially stop for a while until the container has been topped up, again, but that's a minor issue in most cases.

[ghostrider]

set up a solid production line, then go out and find some hard drives so you can get the superior alternates. that will make your production line fast enough to siphon what you need and keep production from being slowed down overmuch. also, try to get pure/alloy ingots asap