Every material has a burn rate: how fast a studio goes through it. The Engine is the part of the Studio page that works that rate out from what the studio actually buys, and says when the next box is due. This note is how it does it, so a studio can check the arithmetic and decide whether to trust it.
Two rates, one at a time
| Until the third restock of a material | From the third restock |
|---|---|
| Estimate. The number of artists the studio gave on the Week, times the pack size, divided by the days one pack lasts one artist on our sheet. Marked estimate. | Actual. The packs bought before the last restock, divided by the days between the first restock and the last. The studio's own consumption, marked actual. |
The switch happens per material, not per studio. Gloves reach three restocks long before a foot pedal does, so gloves run on actuals while the pedal is still an estimate.
The ten-day rule and the fourteen-day box
From the rate and the last restock, the Engine works out what should be left today and how many days that lasts. When ten days or fewer remain, it proposes a restock sized for fourteen days, rounded up to whole packs. Ten and fourteen are the defaults; they are settings, not laws.
What it never does
It never orders. The proposal is a list with editable box counts and one button that puts the list in the cart. The studio changes the numbers, or ignores the list, and nothing happens until someone checks out. An estimate is an estimate; the Engine says so on every row.
What it cannot see
It reads restocks placed here. It does not know what a studio bought elsewhere, what it has on the shelf from before, or that a guest artist doubled the sessions last month. That is why it proposes and does not decide, and why the numbers are editable. A shelf count, entered by the studio, is the obvious next step; it is not built yet, and we would rather say so than pretend.