Assembly Line Tutorial
At
Pixall Manufacturing, your part in the product life cycle begins when
our R&D department comes up with a design for a new product, so
we'll start by paying a visit to the Products page.
Product Designs
A
good product to get started on is the Phunky Phrisbee. Click on it in
the column on the left and you'll see a diagram of it. The column on
the right shows the composition of the materials making up the product.
This one is very simple, just a solid disc 25 pixels in diameter made
of a single material.
Materials Science
As
you may remember from your high school chemistry classes, all matter is
made up of varying amounts of the three basic elements ruddium (R), verdium (G) and bluminum
(B). Each pixel can contain up to 15 atoms of each element, indicated
by a subscript in the chemical formula. Our example product is made of R15, or pure ruddium.
The interstices between the atoms are filled with a black substance known as obscurum,
sometimes referred to as the "fourth element", although this is not
strictly accurate, since it's not really an element but an absence of
any element. (Don't worry if you don't understand this -- a study of
quantum chromatology is needed to fully appreciate it.) The amount of
obscurum is not usually shown in the formula, since it's implied by the
amounts of the elements. The special case of a completely black pixel
is written as K.
Building a Factory
The Factory
page is where you build and operate a factory. On the right there is a
selection of controls and editing tools. From top to bottom they are:
- Power Light - Shows when power to the factory is turned on.
- Start Button - Turns on power to the factory.
- Stop Button - Turns off power to the factory.
- Move Tool - Used to move machines around in the factory.
- Add Tool - Used to add machines to the factory.
- Remove Tool - Used to remove machines from the factory and put them into storage.
- Configure Tool - Used to adjust the settings of machines in the factory.
- Inspect Tool - Used to select certain types of machine for a detailed inspection.
Getting Materials In
The first thing we will need is a way of getting raw materials into the factory. Switch to the Machines page and select the Supply Hopper. Then switch back to the Factory page and select the Add tool.
As
you move the mouse around the factory, an outline of the machine to be
added moves with it. The outline is green when it's over a space where
the machine can be placed, otherwise it's red. In the case of this
particular machine, the outline sticks to the left edge of the screen.
That's because a Supply Hopper needs to be on the left side of the
factory where the materials come in.
Position
the Supply Hopper about half way down the screen and click the mouse
button to place it. If you accidentally put it in the wrong place, use
the Move tool to drag it to a better position.
Building a Conveyor
Next, we need a conveyor belt to get the materials to a machine that can process them. From the Machines page, select the Conveyor End, and then go back to the Factory page. Position it underneath the Supply Hopper, towards the left, and click to add it.
Now select a Conveyor Section from the Machines page, and place it under the Supply Hopper next to the Conveyor End.
Add three more Conveyor Sections, and then another Conveyor End.
The conveyor belt needs a motor to drive it. Select the Conveyor Drive from the Machines page and place it just below one of the Conveyor End sections.
At this point, you can try switching on the factory to see what happens. Click the Start button. You'll get a message asking whether you want to purchase the machines you've just added; answer OK.
If you've positioned all the items properly, the conveyor belt should start moving. When you've finished watching it, click the Stop button.
Choice of Materials
The Supply Hopper isn't supplying anything yet, because we haven't told it what material we want. Select the Configure
tool and click on the top part of the Supply Hopper (the part that
isn't over the conveyor belt). You'll get a dialog box for specifying
the material that the hopper will supply.
Enter 15 0 0 into the R, G, B boxes.
Materials come in standard size sheets. There isn't a 25x25 sheet available, unfortunately -- the closest size is 30 x 30. Enter these numbers into the Sheet Size boxes.
You
can now see what the material is going to cost. The elements come at
different prices -- ruddium is quite cheap, verdium is somewhat more
expensive, and bluminum is more expensive again. Also, pixels made of
pure elements are more expensive than ones that are mixtures.
The
sheet size also affects the price -- it's more economical to purchase
materials in larger sized sheets, provided it won't result in excessive
wastage.
Finally, you need to set the Supply Rate, which governs the time between delivery of successive sheets of material. A rate of 30
sheets per hour will be suitable for this exercise. (An hour of game
time corresponds to a minute of real time, so this translates to one
sheet every two seconds.)
When you've finished configuring the Supply Hopper, click OK.
You
may want to try running the factory again now. Sheets of material
should begin dropping onto the conveyor and moving along it. At the
moment, they'll just fall off when they get to the end, so stop before
you waste too much material.
Processing the Material
Now we need a machine to turn the raw material into a useful product. From the Machines page, select a Punch and place it so that the bottom part is over the conveyor belt.
Using
the Configure tool, click on the Punch (again, above the conveyor
belt). Here you get to select the shape and size of the punching tool,
how far from the edge of the material you want to punch, and which edge
of the material to measure from.
For our purposes, we want a circular tool with a Diameter of 25 and an Offset of 2, measured from either edge.
If you run the factory again now, you'll see the Punch in action. You'll be asked to confirm another equipment purchase.
The
discs that are punched out come out of the chute at the top of the
machine. Currently they will just fall on the floor -- we'll fix that
in a moment.
Collecting the Product
We
need another conveyor to take the parts produced by the Punch. Add
another two Conveyor Ends with a Conveyor Section between them,
underneath the output chute of the Punch. Also add another Conveyor
Drive to drive the new conveyor.
Now select a Packing Station from the Machines page and place it at the right end of the second conveyor, so that its chute lines up with the conveyor.
Using the Configure tool, click on the Packing Station and select Phunky Phrisbee as the product to be packed.
(Not yet implemented - the Packing Station will automatically default to packing Phunky Phrisbees.)
Running the Factory
Now
the factory will do something useful! Click the Start button and watch
what happens. The parts produced by the Punch should get collected and
delivered to the Packing Station, where they will be put into the
crate. When the crate is full (it holds 10 items by default), it will
be shipped off and sold, and if all is well, you will earn some revenue
from it.
To see this happening, switch to the Statistics screen and watch the figures for the Phunky Phrisbee. You should see the Number Sold and Revenue go up periodically. You can also check the Company
page to see the overall balance between income and expenditure,
although it'll be a while before you show a profit, because you need to
recoup the equipment costs.
The amount of revenue earned depends
on how accurately the product was made. A product that perfectly
matches its specification will sell for its full retail price. If there
are any flaws, it will sell at a progressively discounted price. If
it's too badly flawed, it will sell for less than the price of the raw
materials -- not a good situation.
If you see the Number Trashed
of the product going up, it means that your products were so badly
produced that nobody would buy them at any price, and they ended up as
landfill. In that case, stop the factory and check the settings on your
machines before you bankrupt the company!
Quality Control
Although we don't really need it for such a simple product, we'll add a Quality Control Station to learn how it works.
Adding a QC Station
Stop
the factory and use the Move Tool to move the packing station and the
right end of the second conveyor a few squares to the right (remember
to move the Conveyor Drive as well).
Now select a QC Station from the Machines page and place it over the conveyor just before the packing station.
Use the Configure tool to set the QC Station to test Phunky Phrisbees.
Now run the factory. When a good part goes past the QC station, its green light will come on.
To see what happens when the QC station finds a bad part, use the Configure tool to temporarily change the Offset setting of the Punch to -3. This will cause the punching tool to miss the edge of the sheet and create parts with a flat on one side.
When
the malformed part goes past the QC Station, the red light comes on and
the part is placed on the table beside the station so you can take a
look at it. Any part previously on the table gets dropped down the
chute (and falls on the floor at the moment).
Inspecting Parts
Although
it's fairly easy to see what's wrong with the part in this case, a more
subtle error may not be so obvious. To get a detailed look at the part,
select the Inspection Tool and click on the QC station. A badge with a
magnifying glass appears next to the station to indicate that it has
been selected for inspection.
Now, switch to the Inspection
page. You will see a magnified view of the part currently on the QC
Station table, overlayed on a diagram of the product specification.
Correct pixels are outlined in green, and incorrect ones in red, making
it easy to see where the errors are.

(If
the above seems worse than it should be, it's because the QC Station is
a bit stupid in the way it compares things. The flattened frisbee is
only 23 pixels wide, whereas the pattern it's being compared against is
25 pixels wide. The centres of the bounding rectangles are being
aligned, resulting in a lot of erroneous pixels down both sides. The
customers buying your products are just as dumb, however, and will
judge the quality in the same way.)
You can click on a pixel to
find out its exact composition. The selected pixel is highlighted with
a yellow or blue frame. The actual composition of the pixel and the
required composition according to the product specification are
displayed on the right.
Assembling Parts
Lets's
try a slightly more complex product. You may want to start a new game
for this, to give you a fresh factory new initial funding.
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 punch the head out of a larger sheet.
Start with a supply hopper near the bottom left corner of the factory, and 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.
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.
Now it's time to put the parts together. Add an Assembly Robot positioned 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 start raking in the income!
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