Science & Industry

We're setting up a corporate POS for manufacturing and research and I'm curious as to how others handle generating ISK and getting members involved.

One solution to ensuring that members use the POS to produce profitable items is to put up corporate buy contracts for items we want produced, at an appropriate discount to the trade hub. The members using the slots earn more than they would at a public station, but there would still be margin for the corp in it.

Is this how corps normally handle or is some other scheme more common?

Use POS to do blueprint work, and always manufacture and refine (if possible) in an NPC station

This is true for refining (and you don't have a choice in refining in hisec -- you can't anchor a refining array until you get to .3 space or below).

For manufacturing, the story isn't so simple. If you're out in the hinterlands finding an open manufacturing slot isn't easy. R&D slots are impossible to find anywhere in Empire space; hence the proliferation of POS research stations in hisec. The situation is nearly as bad with manufacturing slots in sparsely-populated areas of hisec space with few stations. I used to live out of a POS where the only station was two jumps away, and all manufacturing slots were constantly filled for weeks at a time. It made more sense to set up shop for manufacturing in my POS.

If you're in central Empire space, especially near noob systems, finding open manufacturing slots is pretty easy, but it gets harder the further out towards the hisec rim you go. In lowsec you have a different problem (pirates, station camps). In null you have both problems: lack of available stations/slots, and station camps around the few that do exist. POS manufacturing counters all of these issues.

So my quibble is with the term "always". Manufacture in a station if you can get into the queue easily. Otherwise, do it in your POS.