The Goal:
Tech 1(T1) manufacturing is the basic level of industry in Eve Online. Typically you only need the industry skill at level one, a blueprint original(BPO) or copy(BPC) and the most basic of minerals sourced from the market.
The Plan:What to build? Time to pull out your spreadsheets, you need to see how much it will cost you to build based on material costs vs what you can sell it for. First figure out how much it will cost you to build the item check out this blueprint calculator or Fuzzysteve's blueprint calculator. Then check item prices at your point of sell either in-game or on Eve Central.
Your next consideration is what BPO will you use? How to buy a Blueprint Originals(BPO)? Will you buy an already researched BPO from contracts or buy un-researched BPO from the NPC market and do research yourself? See my Blueprint Research Guide for more info. Don't forget to take into consideration BPO costs into your overall investment.
Where to build? Two things to take into consideration here.
1). Consider availability of materials make sure you can get enough materials it will do you no good if you buy up all the resources in your system and have to fly or ship in your resources using shipping services and lose your margins.
2). Consider the building index of the system or how many people are doing that activity in system. The build costs will scale up as more players build things in this system. Areas like large trade hubs will have higher building indexes as compared to less used systems further out from major hubs. Go to your star map go to the industry folder and you can see the various levels of industry activities in various systems there.
You need to balance the two availability of materials and system building index.
The Skills:
Advanced Industry - 3% reduction in all manufacturing & research time per skill level.
Mass Production - Ability to run 1 additional job per skill level.
Advanced Mass Production - Ability to run 1 additional job per skill level.
Supply Chain Management - Skill at running manufacturing operations remotely.
The Equipment:
Industrial ship to haul your minerals or goods.
Blueprint of the item you want to build.
Minerals (See cost layout below to find out how much you need.)
Station with open manufacturing slots. Note: Even if slots aren't open you may choose to "Get in Line" if for some reason you can't move your minerals to a new station.
Total Costs:
I use simple excel functions to create these spread sheets. After I enter in the mineral amount from the BP in cell B4 for Isogen, I type =(B4*D1) in D4 cell. This function allows me to change my batch number and buy exact amounts of minerals. You can use =sum() to add up the amounts to get a quick grasp of how much things are going to cost. Like I mentioned before you can use some of the various online tools. When I started out I wanted a little bit more control than some of these web applications give you.
Time Required:
Five minutes to buy the materials five minutes to ship the minerals to your station. 10 seconds to start the manufacturing and five minutes to finish and haul back to market. So in total 15 minutes every time your manufacturing job finishes. Again watch the videos below to better understand how to really invest in manufacturing.
Note: As you build more items per batch you will have to wait for those items to manufacturer. For example I currently run 10 slots, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I renew my BPO cycles one day a week and I am building enough units per batch for a 7 day cycle time. This practice is similar to Planetary Interaction cycle times.
Other Resources:
UniWiki Manufacturing
Eve Industry.org's Blueprint Calculator < The manufacturing calculator I use most.
Fuzzwork's Industry Tools
Eve Platoon.de's Industry Calculator
Eve Cost's Industry Calculators
Eve Market Guide.com's Manufacturing Calculator
Jitonomic's Manufacturing Calculator
Eve Isk per Hour Download
D.R.K. Industry Tracker
Danny Centauri's Tech 1 Manufacturing Guide
Video:
