Warehouse distribution

[grampybear]

Hello all,
I am looking for ideas on how to improve distribution from a central warehouse. I have a large warehouse served by rail and truck to handle all the requirements of 8 grocery stores spread around map. The problem comes in the distribution(using just in time). Some items pile up and stop incoming freight while other items run out at both the warehouse and store.
Any ideas welcome. Thank you
EDIT: new link to screen shot


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[grampybear]

FOLLOW-UP:  If the dat file on a truck is changed from freight=piece goods
to freight=beer will the truck then only pickup beer or is the internal game name piece goods? The brewery produces beer, the warehouse shows beer in inventory, the above change should produce a dedicated truck for beer!
Am I on the right track?  Thanks for any help.

[Dwachs]

If beer is defined as piece good, then this truck can carry all piece goods.

[grampybear]

Yes this is true. My problem is that the truck which carries "piece goods" loads all other "piece goods going to grocery stores from warehouse first and leaves large amounts of beer sitting in warehouse. I was trying to create a dedicated truck for beer only. Yes the grocery store needs beer and has none, the distribution is not balanced.

[Spike]

You could try to split the receiving station for the beer from the other goods. Or make a direct, dedicated line for beer, if there are intermediate stops involved.

[grampybear]

Thank you, but staying with the central warehouse idea, if I change the goods category of beer from catg. 1(piece goods) to catg. 0 (special) and change a delivery truck from freight=piece goods to freight=beer will this then create a dedicated truck to deliver beer? ( Similar to steel) I would also have to make a similar change to a rail car to transport beer. I would really like to see the warehouse system work especially for the grocery store chain because most stores ( at least in the US ) do not receive supplies direct from the source. Thank you again for listening and your help.

[Spike]

Changing beer to special freight will make beer-vehicles exclusively transport beer and nothing else. I assume this will solve your problem. If the vehicles dat files already list "beer" as good, no further changes than making beer a special good should be required.

[grampybear]

Thank you for the help. I believe this will work and thus cut down the demand for piece goods freight to grocery stores. I need to think this thru so I don't totally destroy my game. I will post results.

UPDATE: To answer my question, yes by changing the category of freight type in goods dat file and changing "freight=" in the transport units file you can create a dedicated transport unit that will haul one freight type only. This should however be done with great CAUTION and planing because saved games will not be playable, and you need a dedicated transport unit for each mode of transportation you might use ( truck,train,boat,plane). The effort does not justify the results, so its back to developing the warehouse concept differently. Thank you