On of the most difficult aspect of this game for me as a beginner, was adjusting to the various production times. Trying to organize production of crops, mines and wells, to coincide with factories and stores. There was a time, when I literally could stay online for hours, with something becoming 'ready' every 20-30 minutes around the clock... that didn't work for me, because I was online for 48 hours straight, trying to keep my production going!
Finally, I sized up my wells, mines and plantations, so that I could produce the various materials I needed in a 24 hour period, and now I can relax a little more away from the game. For instance, I have two mines producing 2500 coal, and one mine producing 2000 ore, I keep about 2000 chemicals stockpiled, with the size of my mines, this gives me the materials to produce 1000 steel every 15-18 hrs. Once I have figured this out, I can implement a production schedule which keeps all of the plates spinning and continual efficient production going. My target is a 24hr cycle of production, and after about a month of working on it, I am starting to get it all working together.
One thing that helped me, was to make note of some things to make life easier. Production formulas, is the best way to describe it, but it is a table of various equivalents I constructed, to help me formulate my production schedule. I will share some of those here, if anyone has any more, fell free to share as well.
For Leather Jackets production:
15000 Corn = 500 Cattle ~20hrs
6000 Corn = 200 Cattle ~8 hrs
1200 Cotton = 400 Textiles ~24hrs
600 Cotton = 200 Textiles ~12hrs
For Steel production:
2500 Coal = 500 Steel ~9hrs
1000 Ore = 500 Steel ~10hrs
Of course, all of the times, thus the formulas, depend on size of your facilities, and you have to adjust the facilities to the right proportion to keep production running smoothly, but this approach can help ease some of the burden on your organization.