(by The Freezing Chicken)

https://imgur.com/sFF8Rc8

This diagram shows all the businesses in the game and their dependencies (i.e. what they consume to run). As the picture says:

• Green ones are businesses in the "raw" menu that DON'T consume any material to function (you can think of them as "standalone" or “start of the chain”)
• Orange ones are business in the "raw" menu but they DO consume materials to function
• Blue ones are instead businesses in the "finish" menu and they ALL require materials to function.

Green business in the red box do not start any chain, they are fully standalone.

Sheep Farm and Weaving Mill in the purple box are an isolated chain.

The diagram also shows the cities with effective production of that material. Close to each business you can see the names of cities with effective production for that business. You can see that some of them are bold and some are both bold and underlined.

<aside> ℹ️

A Bold City means that city also has effective production of one of the materials required for consumption (one dependency in the same city).

A Bold + Underlined City means that city also has effective production of ALL the materials required for consumption (all dependencies in the same city).

</aside>

That makes it easier to find the best cities without backtracking the arrows. In theory you just need to look at the Bold + Underlined Cities on blue businesses to start planning your positioning, but depending on other factors you might wanna consider different options.

If you find any mistake (even a typo) let me know. City names have been taken from the English version of the game.

(Download the image for full resolution)

Credits to vflower on Steam for his guide, where I took all the info from.