6 ms·

> People are saying "why didn't we buffer up more" ? Well, there we go. Play Factorio. You'll see just how bad buffers are in a simulated factory. A shortage i

> People are saying "why didn't we buffer up more" ? Well, there we go. Play Factorio. You'll see just how bad buffers are in a simulated factory. A shortage in real life causes critical issues for real people. A shortage in Factorio does not.

dragontamer 5y ago
> A shortage in real life causes critical issues for real people. A shortage in Factorio does not. An iron shortage in Factorio causes my iron plates to run out. My iron plates feed the steel furnaces. The steel furnaces build ammo. My ammo is automatically belted to my defensive garrisons. Then the bugs completely wipe out my base, because I was out of ammo. Going backwards: Understanding why I'm out of ammo requires me to understand why I'm out of steel, which requires me to understand why I'm out of iron, which requires me to walk over to the mines and realize the mine is out. ---- Now lets see what happens with buffers. Understanding why I'm out of ammo: wait, I'm not out of ammo. I've got thousands of ammo buffered up right now. As such, I don't fix the problem for 2 or 3 hours. 2 or 3 hours later: my ammo runs out. I then begin the process of figuring out that I'm out of iron. When you have buffers, its hard to tell where your bottlenecks are: buffers make it _seem_ like you have plenty of supply, when in reality, the iron mine ran out a long time ago. ------ Now look at real life. The same thing happens. Toyota had a large buffer of critical chips so that it could feed its factory for months after the chip shortage started (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversary-toyota-in/how-toyota-thrives-when-the-chips-are-down-idUSKBN2B1005 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversa...). Oh right. Lol, guess what? Woops, Toyota has run out of chips (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/business/toyota-production-chip-shortage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/business/toyota-productio...)
- bhelkey 5y ago
  > Now lets see what happens with buffers. > Understanding why I'm out of ammo: wait, I'm not out of ammo. I've got thousands of ammo buffered up right now. As such, I don't fix the problem for 2 or 3 hours. We don't live in a centrally planned (by a single person) economy where companies are run by simple automation. Companies are run by people. These people notice when their suppliers are disrupted. They notice when they can't refill their buffers even before the buffers run out. And suppliers of raw materials certainly notice raw material shortages. We didn't find out about the chip shortage from the article you linked when Toyota's buffer of chips ran out.
- ankeshk 5y ago
  I've not played Factorio but love your argument. Very thought provoking. What happens if something in the middle breaks and you don't have a buffer? What happens if there is no iron shortage but the steel furnace blows up? Aren't buffers important in such situations?
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > What happens if something in the middle breaks and you don't have a buffer? What happens if there is no iron shortage but the steel furnace blows up? Aren't buffers important in such situations? Okay, lets have two factories that convert 5-iron into 1-steel (Factorio ratio): * "Buffer Factory": requiring 7000 steel to buffer up / 35000 iron before working at full capacity. * "JIT Factory" : requires 200 steel to buffer / 1000 iron before working at full capacity. The JIT-factory can sustain for 5-seconds without any inputs. (Belts in the game pull 40-items per second). The Buffer-factory can sustain for 175 seconds. You're seeing this as a good thing. It is not. When you hook up a new source of iron to the JIT-factory, it only needs 5-seconds (assuming 5-belts of iron: 200 iron/second) before it starts up to full capacity. When you hook up a new source of iron to the Buffer-factory, it needs 175 seconds before it goes back into full capacity. (The 175 seconds of buffering "need to be paid" at some point. In the case of Buffer-factories, that payment is done _before_ your end product is even finished). JIT-factory is more useful. You shutdown when you run out of material (aka: using less electricity. Using fewer resources. Using fewer items). The Buffer-factory needs 175-seconds to shutdown after running out of material. It also needs 175-seconds of "booting up" once you hook up new sources of material to it. That's electricity you're spending, resources you're using on BUFFERING that's completely a waste. ------- Yeah, it sucks to be a worker in the JIT-factory, because your managers want to fire you during these low periods. But you can't deny the underlying efficiency of the strategy. Of course workers want the 175-seconds of buffering periods (aka: to be paid even when the factory is unproductive). But that's short-sighted. I'm not saying that workers "Deserve" to get screwed here. But fundamentally speaking, the JIT-factory is clearly more efficient. What we need to discuss politically is how to protect the livelihoods of the workers during these periods when supplies run out. But building systems where you have long periods of "boot up" and "shut down" just so that workers have something to do? That's not useful at all. And anyone who has played Factorio will see this instantly when thinking about buffers. ------------ Now I don't know the "ratios" of chips to cars. But lets say 100 chips create 1 car for simplicity. Lets say Ford gets a shipment of 100,000 chips next month. Should Ford build 1000 vehicles? Or should Ford build 500 vehicles (and buffer up 50,000 chips) ?? Think about what the buffer actually means. Obviously, building 1000 vehicles is the answer. The sooner the vehicles are done, the better. The buffer only wastes time and energy.
rytill 5y ago
Do you have an actual refutation though? Why does buffering perform better in real-world factories than the simulated ones in Factorio?
- bhelkey 5y ago
  The cost of some shortages is measured in lives. With such shortages, preventing the shortage is better than mitigating the shortage. Mitigating the shortage is in turn better than not mitigating the shortage. A buffer gives us time. That time can be used to save lives. A buffer absorbs a short term disruption in a supplier which prevents the shortage. A buffer gives time to look for another supplier in a long term disruption. A buffer delays a shortage when no other supplier is feasible.
- leetcrew 5y ago
  the short answer is the real world is a lot more complicated and random than factorio. factorio is pretty complex for a video game, but trivial compared to a real world supply chain. most of the game mechanics are deterministic, and latencies are measured in minutes rather than weeks. you can analytically solve for how much iron ore you will need in the next hour, what the optimal ratio of copper wire to plastic bar assemblers is for a circuit factory, etc. unless you play with friends, there are no pesky humans to interfere with your perfectly optimized design.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    > factorio is pretty complex for a video game, but trivial compared to a real world supply chain. But Factorio is more complicated than what can be typically described in say... the 470 posts in this topic thus far. As such, Factorio is "closer to reality" than the discussion (at least, than the discussion without Factorio being used as a crutch). I'm using Factorio to elevate the argument closer to reality. Rather than using a crappier hypothetical example in the abstract.

dragontamer 5y ago

> A shortage in real life causes critical issues for real people. A shortage in Factorio does not. An iron shortage in Factorio causes my iron plates to run out. My iron plates feed the steel furnaces. The steel furnaces build ammo. My ammo is automatically belted to my defensive garrisons. Then the bugs completely wipe out my base, because I was out of ammo. Going backwards: Understanding why I'm out of ammo requires me to understand why I'm out of steel, which requires me to understand why I'm out of iron, which requires me to walk over to the mines and realize the mine is out. ---- Now lets see what happens with buffers. Understanding why I'm out of ammo: wait, I'm not out of ammo. I've got thousands of ammo buffered up right now. As such, I don't fix the problem for 2 or 3 hours. 2 or 3 hours later: my ammo runs out. I then begin the process of figuring out that I'm out of iron. When you have buffers, its hard to tell where your bottlenecks are: buffers make it _seem_ like you have plenty of supply, when in reality, the iron mine ran out a long time ago. ------ Now look at real life. The same thing happens. Toyota had a large buffer of critical chips so that it could feed its factory for months after the chip shortage started (https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversary-toyota-in/how-toyota-thrives-when-the-chips-are-down-idUSKBN2B1005 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-fukushima-anniversa...). Oh right. Lol, guess what? Woops, Toyota has run out of chips (https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/business/toyota-production-chip-shortage.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/10/business/toyota-productio...)

bhelkey 5y ago
> Now lets see what happens with buffers. > Understanding why I'm out of ammo: wait, I'm not out of ammo. I've got thousands of ammo buffered up right now. As such, I don't fix the problem for 2 or 3 hours. We don't live in a centrally planned (by a single person) economy where companies are run by simple automation. Companies are run by people. These people notice when their suppliers are disrupted. They notice when they can't refill their buffers even before the buffers run out. And suppliers of raw materials certainly notice raw material shortages. We didn't find out about the chip shortage from the article you linked when Toyota's buffer of chips ran out.
ankeshk 5y ago
I've not played Factorio but love your argument. Very thought provoking. What happens if something in the middle breaks and you don't have a buffer? What happens if there is no iron shortage but the steel furnace blows up? Aren't buffers important in such situations?
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > What happens if something in the middle breaks and you don't have a buffer? What happens if there is no iron shortage but the steel furnace blows up? Aren't buffers important in such situations? Okay, lets have two factories that convert 5-iron into 1-steel (Factorio ratio): * "Buffer Factory": requiring 7000 steel to buffer up / 35000 iron before working at full capacity. * "JIT Factory" : requires 200 steel to buffer / 1000 iron before working at full capacity. The JIT-factory can sustain for 5-seconds without any inputs. (Belts in the game pull 40-items per second). The Buffer-factory can sustain for 175 seconds. You're seeing this as a good thing. It is not. When you hook up a new source of iron to the JIT-factory, it only needs 5-seconds (assuming 5-belts of iron: 200 iron/second) before it starts up to full capacity. When you hook up a new source of iron to the Buffer-factory, it needs 175 seconds before it goes back into full capacity. (The 175 seconds of buffering "need to be paid" at some point. In the case of Buffer-factories, that payment is done _before_ your end product is even finished). JIT-factory is more useful. You shutdown when you run out of material (aka: using less electricity. Using fewer resources. Using fewer items). The Buffer-factory needs 175-seconds to shutdown after running out of material. It also needs 175-seconds of "booting up" once you hook up new sources of material to it. That's electricity you're spending, resources you're using on BUFFERING that's completely a waste. ------- Yeah, it sucks to be a worker in the JIT-factory, because your managers want to fire you during these low periods. But you can't deny the underlying efficiency of the strategy. Of course workers want the 175-seconds of buffering periods (aka: to be paid even when the factory is unproductive). But that's short-sighted. I'm not saying that workers "Deserve" to get screwed here. But fundamentally speaking, the JIT-factory is clearly more efficient. What we need to discuss politically is how to protect the livelihoods of the workers during these periods when supplies run out. But building systems where you have long periods of "boot up" and "shut down" just so that workers have something to do? That's not useful at all. And anyone who has played Factorio will see this instantly when thinking about buffers. ------------ Now I don't know the "ratios" of chips to cars. But lets say 100 chips create 1 car for simplicity. Lets say Ford gets a shipment of 100,000 chips next month. Should Ford build 1000 vehicles? Or should Ford build 500 vehicles (and buffer up 50,000 chips) ?? Think about what the buffer actually means. Obviously, building 1000 vehicles is the answer. The sooner the vehicles are done, the better. The buffer only wastes time and energy.

rytill 5y ago

Do you have an actual refutation though? Why does buffering perform better in real-world factories than the simulated ones in Factorio?

bhelkey 5y ago
The cost of some shortages is measured in lives. With such shortages, preventing the shortage is better than mitigating the shortage. Mitigating the shortage is in turn better than not mitigating the shortage. A buffer gives us time. That time can be used to save lives. A buffer absorbs a short term disruption in a supplier which prevents the shortage. A buffer gives time to look for another supplier in a long term disruption. A buffer delays a shortage when no other supplier is feasible.
leetcrew 5y ago
the short answer is the real world is a lot more complicated and random than factorio. factorio is pretty complex for a video game, but trivial compared to a real world supply chain. most of the game mechanics are deterministic, and latencies are measured in minutes rather than weeks. you can analytically solve for how much iron ore you will need in the next hour, what the optimal ratio of copper wire to plastic bar assemblers is for a circuit factory, etc. unless you play with friends, there are no pesky humans to interfere with your perfectly optimized design.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  > factorio is pretty complex for a video game, but trivial compared to a real world supply chain. But Factorio is more complicated than what can be typically described in say... the 470 posts in this topic thus far. As such, Factorio is "closer to reality" than the discussion (at least, than the discussion without Factorio being used as a crutch). I'm using Factorio to elevate the argument closer to reality. Rather than using a crappier hypothetical example in the abstract.