Manufacturing

Manufacturing introduces incredible opportunities for players to introduce their own user generated content into Upland. You can design map assets (formerly outdoor decor), car skins, or structure ornaments. You can even upload your own NFTs to sell in Upland and leverage their API to create unique experiences within the platform. The manufacturing process is broken down into several different stages. Becoming an effective manufacturer requires more than just a property in Upland and the spark resources to manufacture the items. This page starts with the preparation required for anyone who is interested in becoming a manufacturer, and below will detail the actual steps.

One of the benefits of being a manufacturer is that you as the factory owner are able to earn royalties in perpetuity of items that were manufactured in your factory.

Before you can begin to manufacture anything, the first step is to define a property you wish to turn into a manufacturing plant. You should determine what you plan to produce – type of asset, relative size of the assets, who your customers are and the sales price. These are important details because they will likely have an impact on the size of the property that you will want to create your factory metaventure on. Not only will you need to place a large enough factory on the property, but you will also require adequate space on that property to hold inventory before transporting it to the showroom where it will be sold. This means the factory’s proximity to the show room is another important factor in both the manufacturing process and the final sales price of the items produced. The need to have vehicles transporting newly produced inventory to the showroom will lead to car depreciation, and spark fuel costs. If you don’t own the cars yourself, you will likely have to pay for using a transportation service as well. Check out the catalogue of different MV Motor vehicles to compare their abilities as they pertain to transportation of goods, and learn more about the car economy here.

Doing market research and understanding where your customers are located will help you to understand how much they will be willing to pay for the item, the quantity required and therefore the total costs to manufacture – factoring in land, structure, manufacturing, and transportation costs. Of course there are other costs such as design costs, marketing, and general overhead costs of running a business – in the real world, or virtually; these need to be factored in as well. Once the property has been selected and purchased you will need to construct the factory. This process will be similar to that of constructing a home using spark, and creating a metaventure. Here is a list of different factory sizes and spark requirements.

Manufacturing is more than just ensuring you have enough spark. One of the important key performance indicators (KPIs) for a manufacturing plant is downtime. The goal of a plant is ensure that products are being produced without any interruptions. If issues arise that stop the plant from manufacturing goods it is missing out on potential revenue and profit. Understanding the market, demand for products in showrooms, transportation availability, inventory lot size and spark availability all can cause potential bottlenecks in the process causing the plant to halt production. All these factors will have to be managed in tandem to ensure the plant and entire supply chain works efficiently.

Manufacturing process

Note – this page is last updated on July 2023. As more feature begins to roll out across Upland, more information will be added to this page.

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