Supply Chain Management Example

[jahlon]

Supply Chain Management and how it benefits everyone
From what we’ve already discovered in Archeage thus far, a single account can not do everything. Being limited to 5 specializations at start and more when you upgrade (although additional master ranks is still unknown) you need to consider what you want to be doing in the game at launch and what the plans for you being successful are.
Ideally, if everyone is willing to work together, we will be able to create multiple supply chains that involve zero muda (waste). The other goal of this is to have pull system of supply. In this, a crafter never reaches out their hand for materials to find it empty. Ideally we will always have just enough supply on hand for a crafter.
The following team is going to be called Team Example. This team is going to be focused on animal husbandry, alchemy, fishing, cloth, and leather armor. Assume all stocking levels have been worked out ahead of time, and that the chests referencing are stocked with their starter quantities. Everything in the example will work on replacement.
NOTE:
The team members and responsibilities are:
Logistics Commander: Jahlon (not actually on team just the officer online who oversees all logistics processes)

Team Logistics Liasion: Ian (POC to the Logistics Commander for sourcing needs / emergencies)

Primary Suppliers:
Susan Farming / Gathering / Aqua Farming
Katie Animal Husbandry / Farming
Ken Farming / Fishing
Bob Fishing / Mining

Timmie Tailoring
Leelani Leatherworking
Ian Alchemy

Now, at first look most everything lines up here except….why do we have mining in this team? The reason we have mining in this team because the only place to get gemstones for lures is through mining. In theory, if everyone is working together, the metal and stone from Bob mining would be shunted over to another team for processing and use.
So, Katie logs in first for the morning and heads over to the shared chest. She takes out a stack of Combined Feed. She goes about feeding her animals, in this case sheep. She sheers her sheep and gets wool. She also harvests her 16 bundles of cotton and gets 160 Cotton and 120 worms. She replants her farm, and then heads over to the chest and puts in the cotton, the wool, and the worms. Knowing she has broken into a full stack of Combined Feed, she takes the 200 Clovers, 100 Pumpkins and the hay that is present and she makes a replacement stack of Combined Feed. She places the fresh stack of feed in the bank. Although she is the primary user of the product, by leaving the full stack in the bank, the re-suppliers know what the urgency of re-supply is.

Susan logs in next. When she checks the team shared chest (which is really a work indictor for a straight supplier with no craft), she checks the bank and sees that there is 200 Clover and 100 Pumpkin missing. Having agreed to keep the stock of clover and pumpkins up, she takes 2 stacks of Clovers and 1 stack of pumpkins out of her personal bank. Knowing that she is responsible for always making sure there are 2 stacks of Clover and 1 of Pumpkin in the shared bank, (so that there is never an empty crafter hand reaching for raw materials) she goes over and harvests her farm and then plants 7 Clover Bundles and 30 Pumpkin seeds. When this fresh planting is ready, it will replenish her personal supply. Seeing that nothing else is missing from the shared chest, she decides to do a mix of clover bundles and rose bundles for Small Root Dye and Rice and Corn bundles for Small Seed Oil. Dumping in any worms and hay she got into the shared chest, she puts the rest of the items she harvests into her personal chest. She doesn’t have any obligations to the shared chest, and she is building up her personal responsibility stores for the future. She heads to her Aqua Farm and plants a smattering of different coral, as nobody has requested anything of her yet. She goes about her day leveling or whatever she wants to do.

Ken logs in next. He sees in his mailbox a mail from Jahlon. It’s a wrapped fishing pole. He had requested a fishing pole the night before. In the mail it says “Please return 10 Bamboo” Ken, having no bamboo in his bank, goes and buys 2 saplings. Since the yield on a single tree can be 9-10, Ken thinks it’s best to plant 2 trees. He’ll have the 10 he needs to return, and some spare in the future so he only needs to plant 1 tree when he needs a fishing pole. He then plants 14 cotton bundles and then heads over the shared bank. He finds the 200 or so worms that Katie and Susan have gotten. He takes these and goes fishing. When he gets back from fishing, he ships the fish that can be turned into bait to Ian (because they are a resource, but not needed on their team, but eventually they will want the fishing bait As Ian is the liaison, he waits to talk to Jahlon about what to do with it). He takes the remaining fish and sells them and then takes part (not all, but part) of the proceeds from the sale of the fish and puts the gold in the bank. He was lucky and in 200 worms he got 3 waterlogged boxes. Knowing that the bait is coming from Katie and Susan he ships them each a waterlogged box, and he keeps one for himself. Being out of bait and having no fishing to do, he goes off to do whatever it is he wants to do.

Bob logs in next. He has forgotten to ask anyone for a fishing pole the day before. He asks Jahlon if there are any fishing poles in stock. Jahlon, being over the logistics department, ships Bob one for the day, asking for 10 bamboo in return. Bob, fishing rod in hand, heads over to the shared bank, and finding no worms, curses Ken’s name.

This is the first example of a problem with Logistics. You now have a person on the team who has extended their hand to pull work, but there is no work for the hand to do. Without an item to place in that hand, we get non-value added time. This is something we want to avoid. Bob remembers to mention that we need more worms…..a lot more.

Bob now has a few options. If he has his own gold, he can buy worms, but this is counterproductive to the whole team / guild concept. He can ask the guild if anyone has any worms, and work some sort of deal with them. Or he can use money that Ken put in the chest to buy worms, but then return the valuable items back to the chest.

In this case, Bob, asks in chat and Jahlon having surplus worms from another team sends 500 worms in exchange for the first 5 waterlogged boxes he gets.

Eventually those 5 waterlogged boxes will get shipped to team that provided the worms. This benefits everyone, because the team with 500 worms has no fisher. They could be getting a lot more gold for the worm, but they are helping their guild.

When Bob is finished, he goes mining. He gets several hundred ore and stone, but no gemstones. This is problematic for him. He decides to sell the stone and the iron ore on the AH to begin stockpiling Topaz and Rubies.

While the iron ore and stone would be better served inside the guild, it is easy to see why he might make this decision. The system failed to meet his need earlier, so now he has the drive to be self-sufficient. This is another thing we need to try to avoid. People who are let down by the system, will have little faith in the system.

Luckily, Bob changes his mind and decides to trust the system some more and ships the ore and stone off to a guild mate to be converted and returned. Although this will reduce its value on the AH slightly, it makes it easier to store and Bob plans on using it to build a Bungalow later.

What’s happening behind the scenes?

((Meanwhile, Jahlon, with visibility over the current situation takes a note. He has shipped Team Example 2 fishing poles in the same day. Looking at Team Example, he sees they do not have a Handicrafts Person or a Logging Person. Doing what he does, he requests bamboo from the logging person on another team. He asks them what they might need in the future and take note of that. He also requests fishing line from Timmie. When he has these items, he will contact Team Handicrafts and ask them for several fishing poles the guild can keep in stock. He also begins to send messages out to see if there are surplus worms anywhere in the system that can be diverted to Team Example. The people who Jahlon is contacting is the Team Liaison. By knowing what each team is doing, the surplus items are shifted around to where they have the most benefit.))

Timmie logs in next and sees an email from Jahlon asking for fishing line. His first stop is the shared bank. Finding cotton and wool, he takes those mats over to the bench loom and makes 50 fishing line. For Timmie this has been a benefit, because fishing line allows him to level up his Tailoring. He also knows that it helps his team because if Bob and Ken are getting fishing poles for free, and worms for free, then some amount of gold should be going into the bank, which will help Timmie when he needs to buy Diluated Fabric Finish.

Finishing the fishing line, Timmie ships them over to Jahlon. Timmie begins converting the rest of the cotton into Cloth. Looking ahead, Timmie checks the shared bank and sees 25 Small Root Dye and 10 Small Leaf Dye. Looking ahead at his future, Timmie knows he will be proficiency 20,000 soon and that he might want to try making some Level 40 gear. Timmie removes the 25 Small Root Dye and the 10 Small leaf Dye. This act will send a message to Ian that replenishment is needed.

Amber logs in next. The animals that are on her farm to be butchered haven’t matured yet. There are no hides in the shared bank. Looking at her labor, Amber sees she is at 50% labor.

Although she is willing to do work now, there is time for the animals to mature before she hits her labor cap. While a temporary failure of the supply system, it is not a critical failure.

She goes about her leveling or doing some other work. In the meantime, her animals mature, and Katie appears and slaughters the animals and puts the pelts in the bank. Additionally, the sheep from earlier have outlived their usefulness and they get slaughtered as well so those pelts go in the bank

Now Amber has more pelts than she can convert, so a small stockpile develops. While we try to avoid this, it is natural in the accordion effect of the supply chain. A slight overstock is better than an understock.

Katie now has surplus meat. As they do not have a cook on their team, she can either sell it, or ship it off to another team.

Ideally we would not want this to happen either. We would want a Cook on this team which might have better balanced the workloads.

Finally, Ian logs in. He checks the bank and sees the Root Dye and Leaf Dye missing. Checking his inventory, he has the ability to replace the root dye but not the Leaf Dye. Since there is a very specific need, Ian clips off a message to Susan and informs her of the need of Lucky Clovers. This will change how she plants clovers in the future, however, it will have a ripple effect as it will produce less worms (which were already at a low number). He then checks everything else he needs, and finding he has no other work to do, he begins to grind on what he has mats to grind on. If he is lucky there will be gold in the shared bank that he can take and buy bottles and catalysts.

When those sales come through, the majority of the money would be returned to the shared bank and it paid for his grinding. It will also allow other people to grind.

Chatting with the members of his team, he discovers the lack of worms to be a problem. Given they are doing Animal Husbandry (which requires pumpkins and those don’t bundle) and they are doing 2 crafts (which require green items for the dyes), this team is going to struggle a little bit, but it’s doable. The conversation goes something like this:


Ian: How is everyone?
Bob: I need worms.
Susan: I put 80 worms in the bank today
Katie: I put 120 worms in the bank.
Ken: I used 200 worms from the bank today and another 120 of my own.
Bob: We need to figure out how to get 1,200 worms a day
Timmie: That’s 120 – 130 bundles.

So the team has worked themselves through their problem, they need to increase their worm production by 1000%.

Amber: We could grow bundles with shorter grow times
Timmie: But I need cotton
Susan: And I’ll run out of labor

So, the team has run into 2 problems. The first is that they are going to labor starve themselves if they try to produce more bundles. Secondly, the way to get more worms hurts the tailor who needs to the cotton.

Ian: Maybe we can get worms from another team.

This is reaching out across the enterprise and getting a resource from another team. This is precisely the way a guild needs to function. There may be a team with no fisher on it, so those worms would be going to the Auction House. While that short infusion of cash would be healthy, consider this, a pair of fishermen at 50,000 proficiency can pull in 600 gold if they 1) get lucky and 2) get people to go with them.

Bob: That worked earlier. I traded waterlogged boxes for worms.

This is also a consideration. A stack of 100 worms will almost always yield a waterlogged box. If you are feeding worms to a fisher and asking for the box in return, the fisher is getting their proficiency, and you are getting the boxes.

Ian: Ok, let me go find out what teams may have worms.

There are other ways that Team Example may have tried to fix their issue. Someone could have stopped doing their main job and started farming. Farms could have been converted to crops vs animals. Shorter bundles could have been grown instead of cotton. All of these are potential solutions, but they are driving an independent solution vs an interdependent solution.

The families (teams) need to be independent and able to produce what they say they can produce, but they also need to trust that if they reach for something, it will be there.

Remember, team participation is by no means mandatory. If you don’t want to be part of it, simply don’t. If you want to be totally independent, go for it. One thing I learned in the logistics world is that it’s easier to make one widget in part of a process, then trying to own the entire process, but if you want to own the whole process, go for it.

Also, there are combinations of people that should be working together.


Animal Husbandry should be paired with Cooking and Leatherworking
Fishing should be paired with Handicrafts and Mining
Weaponry should be paired with Mining
Carpentry should be paired with Logging