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I haven't played Factorio, so maybe I'm missing something... but if you don't have buffers and suddenly whatever that produces something essentially goes away, what happens to all your just in time pieces? Seems pretty certain that they'll all end up idle.

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Yes. Iron mines run out in Factorio. That then causes the player to search for new sources of iron to fix your supply chain issue.

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In contrast, if you buffered up... you end up running out of Iron 10 hours ago. Then your buffers deplete and you're back in the same position, except you've built out your supply chain to be even more fragile than before (because you had an additional 10 hours of expansion).

That's because you're not setting up alerts to warn you when your buffers are depleting. In a simple system like Factorio, adding a buffer to catch oversupply should never stop production more than not having a buffer at all. (A related problem in Factorio is that the available buffers tend to fill themselves based on the topology of the belt network rather than actual oversupply, and then tend to not empty into where they are needed until the logistics network is developed. In the real world there are price signals and communication between factories, so supplies are not allocated to factories on a first-come first-serve basis (inserters serving themselves).

> to catch oversupply

What oversupply?

Every chip that was allocated to cars has been used to make more cars. Saving up more chips in 2020, 2019, or 2018 would have only resulted in fewer cars being built compared to today.

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