Science & Industry

EvE University Wiki has great pages, including a few for industry, so it's a good place to start. http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/Manufacturing

For something more practical, it depends on what you want to do with industry? You can use it to be self sufficient deep in null/wormhole or you can use it to make a profit in hisec.

The most important thing to verify is that your output product is worth more than your input materials, even if you mine the ore yourself. You need to make sure that doing the industry job is more profitable than just selling the ore/minerals. I personally keep a large spreadsheet of all my blueprints which tells me both:

1) The (Output Price)/(Input Price) for a blueprint
2) The ISK/hour of a blueprint (Which includes both ME and TE!)

I update my prices each week, since they don't usually change too fast. Then, each day I start at the top (ISK/hour) of my spreadsheet and manufacture items which I am not currently selling from a previous job run. Then I sell the items 0.01 ISK below the cheapest sell order. I update the sell orders at least once a day to make sure they're the cheapest on the market without going below my cost of production. I do all of this on an alt in Amarr. The disadvantage to this is that the system cost index in Amarr is high (usually 7.5%). This is just how I do industry as an example, but everyone will have their own way of doing things

Some general trends I've noticed for the past 3 months or so:

1) Ammo, especially the small types, often have great (output price)/(input price) but poor ISK/hour.
2) Ships suck. No idea why, but the ship value is usually worth far less than the minerals and various fees. Even T2 ships are usually like this. The only ship BPOs that I have that are profitable (for the moment) are the osprey and augoror.
3) "Weird Items" like rigs, fuel blocks, and MTUs are some of my most profitable items.
4) A decent number of T2 modules are pretty good, but not all.
5) Commonly used modules like damage controls, large cap batteries, and large shield extenders have been profitable for me recently.

Thanks so much