Quality vs. Design and alternative to 9 square system

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bundyaxl
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Joined: Sat Jan 19, 2013 9:02 pm

Quality vs. Design and alternative to 9 square system

Post by bundyaxl »

Add the concept of design to the game and change the concept of quality.

Design

The design would actually replace the current quality system.
So everything that is done in R&D and software firms is actually the design of the product, not quality.
The design should also have 'variations'.

Possible implementation could include a design rating that is based on the skills and experience of your team.
The player can get the option to direct the design in a few different ways...
Linear refinement - similar to current system where the same design is refined and improved. This could work for certain industries and in most industries at least short term. The longer you do this and depending on competition, the rating of the design could drop because it's getting boring, for example we see this with smart phones now where some generations are a small incremental improvement where people might not like it as much anymore because changes aren't good enough or you may have a revolutionary product come on the market and the incremental improvement would get a bad rating when otherwise it would increase.
Radical change - make a change using similar technology to try to increase the rating dramatically with 1 research term like the radical currently or did in the past, not sure if that's still in the game. The player would get the rough probability of the results and will take a chance.
Revolutionary change - make a major design change using new technology such as a touch screen on a mobile phone for example. This would come with the same probability thing as the radical, it would take into account the technology you want to implement and the knowledge of your team of the same or similar techs. So if something really new is invented you will have a lower probability of a good design but you will get the option to move members of the team that invented the technology to the design staff and they will increase chances of a good design with the trade off that you now have to get someone for the research position which may not be easily replaced with the original design person.

Using this it would allow new competitors to disrupt the market like when the iPhone came out by introducing a new product that beats the others using technology that was already in use but with refinement and a bit of luck which would be the probability system and the skill of your designers.
This system would also complement the product customization feature with each customized product you would actually have a design studio put out a design that a factory could produce.

Product design would be weighted for importance of design vs. overall quality (a wooden 2x4 design can have a low rating but the quality is the most important so for something like this you can make an initial design of a 2"x4"x8' 3D rectangle and never have to refine the design but the quality will always be important which is derived from the raw material (good trees), the equipment/process (good saws and curing equipment).

Quality

In terms of manufacturing the quality is influenced by the design to a degree but is actually based on a few factors such as the skill/morale of the labor, quality of raw materials, quality of the equipment and facilities and in some cases environmental variations.

Farms - Quality would include the soil quality of the city or area of the city once that's implemented among the other standard things like experience and skill.
Factories - Implement specialized factories for various industries.
The specialized factories would work similar to how stores work where they can only handle certain products but it would be more based on how the product is made.
The 9 square layout would have to change, but it would be possible to just add this to that system... the requirement of the equipment, so for example if you are building a car you need an assembly line so when you build an assembly plant you have to purchase the equipment where you would have some options of quality vs. cost of equipment.
The equipment would be made for certain design rating ranges, so the low cost equipment can handle a design rating of 0-33, the medium cost 34-66, the high cost 66-90 and maybe make a specialized equipment for high design rated products above 90, numbers aren't exact, just examples.
If you make an average car with 50 design rating the medium cost equipment can yield say 85% quality, the low cost like would penalize you to 50-70% quality depending on how important process quality is (some products may have a higher weight on labor or raw material quality), the high cost would increase the quality to 95%. The expensive equipment would be lower volume and more expensive so not worth the extra quality since the design will limit how much you can charge for the product but it might be worth it for an just slightly above average luxury car and build the brand on reliability which will be an effect of quality and design.
For high design rated products they would require the expensive tier equipment to make but not automatically give you the high quality since the product is much harder to make. In real life the high end hyper cars like Ferrari's perform well but they aren't the most reliable vehicles for day driving so the design is good and the overall quality is good but the product is so complex that it's just hard to make it with top quality/reliability regardless of how much money you throw at it.
Sliders can be used to adjust the 'quality' of the production equipment like overall quality (this affects quality in that cheap machines will make more scrap parts and will release more bad parts to the customer) but with more expensive machines and robust process you may take a hit on output so make a slider for the planned output volume which would affect how much floor space is required so you have to balance between separate lines/products in one factory.
You would have other options or a slider for versatility of the line, so if you want to make it very specialized it will be cheaper and higher volume for the same quality and floor space but if you want to add raw materials or adjust the quality and volume of the line it will be impossible or more expensive. A more versatile line will allow you to make future adjustments cheaper and easier but it will have an overall lower volume for the same quality and floor space.
Other sliders can include the tech and automation. If you opt for more automation it may affect quality up or down depending on product, for some things like cheap cars automation is better, for more expensive super cars hand made can be better. Both systems have to be done right of course, the best automated line will always beat the worst hand made operators even for complex things and vice versa.
Automation will be gradually researched and improved.
You can make another industry where an in game company can build and research automation systems so if a company wants to build a factory they have to hire an automation (or general construction company) to build the line and/or whole building.
Each factory can have a similar idea to an R&D facility where you have to hire staff, management and set their wages to maintain quality and loyalty.


Ridding the game of the 9 square system would be almost essential for this.
I think the current game should be able to handle changing this UI and layout to a more versatile list based layout.
The factory UI would have sections for what the factory needs.
When building a factory you should select what product type or product design you want.
After selecting the product you will specify how much of that product you want to produce (you will make this decision based on the market demand/current sales and how much money you have to set it up).
If I know the market is 1M for a product and I know I can reasonably take a third of the market I know I want to be able to produce around 400K of the product (bit extra for expansion and productivity issues) so the game should tell you what size lot you need, then the individual building should scale on the lot so a 3x3 factory should be able to range between 100K and 500K of this example product then anything bigger you need a 4x4 factory which maybe ranges to 1M.
Once you have the factory you make the line, if you want two similar products with half the volume then you make to similar lines in that factory, otherwise the line will work similar in that you set up your sliders mentioned above and it will tell you how much space you have and so on.
Then you hire your staff, so you will need a manager, and a few teams for quality, maintenance and logistics. These teams will dictate the quality of service which will affect the final quality of the product and productivity of the facility. The teams will be affected by the salaries and maybe there can be a benefit system of some sort so you can adjust the salary and add a certain % to medical benefit, social fund (pizza parties at work) overtime pay, vacation time, etc. The staff and productivity can also include the production cycle and terms - so is the firm running 8 hour shifts 24 hours a day 5 days a week or is it 12 hour continental shifts and 7 day productivity schedule or other. This will affect the morale of the staff, and let's say you utilize overtime the overall morale of the staff may go up in the short term since they are getting paid more but will start to go down long term as they get overworked lowering morale and quality.
When your staff is hired you set up your inputs so it would just give you a list of requirements based on the product type or design you chose.
It would give you a list so for a simple product like a 2x4 you would need lumber and a low versatility production line/process because you know you won't be changing the design. Generally raw materials will not change in design much until you get to high end stuff.
For complex stuff like cars you may want a more versatile line since you will be updating the product and making variations so the input list would require (car body, engine, wheel and tire), in some cases the design may allow for a variation so the design center would make the car design in a similar way with the list of all possible options and what you want so if you have 3 engine designs and select all of those when making your car design the factory will allow you to make a similar selection but not require it. So you can make the V6 version of the car in one factory and the v8 version in another or make them side by side on the same line.
The factory designer would end up with the packing and shipping method.

This whole thing would work as a factory designer before you place your factory.



Lost my train of thought.
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