Industry - One city or one per city

[Profa]

I am wondering is it better to have one main city for production of electronic goods(full chain from mines to retail) or in every city?
Settings are with 7 cities - 4 big, others medium.

One city advantages - centralized production with better utilization of factories(warehouse), better natural resources utilization
More city advantages - lower transport cost, availability of natural resources for other low cost products(food)

What are your experiences?

[WilliamMGary]

I am wondering is it better to have one main city for production of electronic goods(full chain from mines to retail) or in every city?
Settings are with 7 cities - 4 big, others medium.

One city advantages - centralized production with better utilization of factories(warehouse), better natural resources utilization
More city advantages - lower transport cost, availability of natural resources for other low cost products(food)

What are your experiences?

Your setup is similar to mines. Starting out I think centralizing production is smart, the issue i'm running into is keeping up with demand. Once you have the cash I would recommend setting up a 2nd manufacturing hub and dividing the cities out. I heard that manufacturing in the city does provide additional benefits (not sure on the exact details) but the expense and logistical issues I think would negate that. I'm currently running a $14 billion on $800 million of inventory so I have a big problem but trying to wrap up a merger integration.


Reference: http://capitalismfans.com/businessjourn ... /WMGP.html

[Esoteric Rogue]

I'm not certain, but I don't think centralization helps. I think the biggest pro would be what you are paying in labor if you built only in a low real wage rate locale. But the cons of shipping price can easily be worse.

If it were possible to do with only one factory, then I would go for it. But you almost always need several factories for several cities. At that point it seems senseless to build another factor in the first city, when you don't need anymore supply *in that city*. Yuu're volunteering to pay much more shipping when it could have easily been avoided by building where the supply is needed.

[WilliamMGary]

I'm not certain, but I don't think centralization helps. I think the biggest pro would be what you are paying in labor if you built only in a low real wage rate locale. But the cons of shipping price can easily be worse.

If it were possible to do with only one factory, then I would go for it. But you almost always need several factories for several cities. At that point it seems senseless to build another factor in the first city, when you don't need anymore supply *in that city*. Yuu're volunteering to pay much more shipping when it could have easily been avoided by building where the supply is needed.

I think people gets missed guided by wages. When starting out centralizer once demand can justify another factory start looking for another MFG hub and if you're working with 7 cities split the hub to serve certain cities. Hub 1 servs cities 1,2,3,4 hub 2 serves cities 4,5,6,7.

In my game I plan on developing a 2nd hub with small factories to supply my smaller market retail stores that the COO control. One reason is this will allow me to reduce expenses for those markets, allowing me to offer lower wholesale rates to those stores then I can currently offer and provides and my favoriate advantage of centralization is that it will enable me to go to my 2nd hub and I can get a good understanding of what the markets their serving are doing. What products are moving, what products are not. The supply and demand, how well are the store performing. If I had a factory in each city there would be no way I could obtain this valuable information because I would have to hop around cities. Hubs are useful for not centralizing products but also centralizing your valuable business operation information.

[azxcvbnm321]

I use the "hub" strategy as well. For most products, the shipping costs outweigh the increased wages, plus wages tend to equalize over time between cities though it'll take a long long time. I basically follow what the above post describes.