Malkasphia released a factory design approximately a year ago. It was a factory based upon logic gates. I remember commenting at the time saying that it would be cool if you could just give a factory some orders and it would make whatever you requested with no further input. Alas, the tools did not exist at the time to actually implement something like that.
However, with combinators, the game has now changed. This factory is a proof to concept showing the power of the Combinator. This factory shows that it is possible to give a factory a specific set of instructions and for it to produce exactly what we asked for with zero waste. The logic is completely dynamic, so does not rely on a set order. You can give it whatever order you want. As this is just a proof of concept, we've only implemented two items. The theory however is sound and using a repeatable logic build of an RS latch plus a couple of other combinators, you can implement as many items as you care to.
Credit to /u/gopheratl from /r/factorio for the huge amount of help he gave me on this. I wouldn't have been able to get it done without him. He wrote an excellent tutorial a couple of days ago. He understands logic gates at a level I can't even fathom. The broad idea of the factory is mine, inspired by Malkasphia but Gopher really did the majority of the grunt work in actually getting it to do what it should.
I look forward to what comes next
