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[Pvt. Pirate]

"To do the job in that second image, that dwarf will take a month to walk all over and collect all those bolts then bring them all to the bin, maybe two months."
during which, neither the bin nor any of the items are available for other dorfs to use. This has  ahuge potential to bring a fort to a full halt although everything needed to proceed existing is there, just unavailable due to this.

[anewaname]

Yep, that is why I put the warning in there. That job does not cause interruptions because the military use wood bolts for training, but it is a good example to show what the OP should be looking for with his iron bar stockpile.

[Pvt. Pirate]

ever since i read about the bin problem, i tried to avoid them.
one of my forts suddenly got many bins when a caravan ran amok... (i had to (re)claim stuff after some goblin attack and d-b-c-marked the whole map and the traders didn't let me take their stuff without a fight.)
so with a sudden overwhelming amount of cloth and leather, my dorfs could do a lot of great work, but the bins broke my whole economy for good.

[anewaname]

It sounds like you were using stockpiles that would accept bins, but had no bins. Your system worked so long as no one added bins to it. If I switched to using metal bolts for training, there would be spam messages from my setup. You might have just needed to set bins to 0 for all those stockpiles to stop the problems. I have 105 bins in this fort and rarely have any messages from them.

[Pvt. Pirate]

that would've been the solution, but i wasn't aware of it until it was too late already.

[Fleeting Frames]

In the future, you can pre-emptively set reserved bins to some stupid high number so if you get stray empty bin somehow it won't be used. Though that prevents using bins normally fortress-wide, which may not be desirable. 

[Pvt. Pirate]

In the future, you can pre-emptively set reserved bins to some stupid high number so if you get stray empty bin somehow it won't be used. Though that prevents using bins normally fortress-wide, which may not be desirable.

you mean i create a huge stockpile for nothing but bins and forbid bin use in all other stockpiles?

[Fleeting Frames]

No. In the stock'p'ile definition menu, there's +-/* options to reserve food containers and bins. This number of respective items will not be added to the stockpiles. (It'll not reassign already existing ones, but it does let you keep barrels/pots in reserve for brewing rather than meat products.)

Btw, side note on the screenshot anewaname posted earlier: Sure, the ammo is locked up for two months in his fort, but it'd take twice as long to carry each individual bolt (stack) by hand. (As for removing it from bins to avoid military pickup equipment going on forever, I suppose you could set up it to be shotgunned+tunneled as needed, but it'd take bit of setup.)

[Pvt. Pirate]

No. In the stock'p'ile definition menu, there's +-/* options to reserve food containers and bins. This number of respective items will not be added to the stockpiles. (It'll not reassign already existing ones, but it does let you keep barrels/pots in reserve for brewing rather than meat products.)

Btw, side note on the screenshot anewaname posted earlier: Sure, the ammo is locked up for two months in his fort, but it'd take twice as long to carry each individual bolt (stack) by hand. (As for removing it from bins to avoid military pickup equipment going on forever, I suppose you could set up it to be shotgunned+tunneled as needed, but it'd take bit of setup.)

there is only cv/CV and er/ER which are used for maxbarrel and maxbin in the stockpile.
oh, wrong menu... now i found it. thanks

[Dozebôm Lolumzalìs]

Btw, side note on the screenshot anewaname posted earlier: Sure, the ammo is locked up for two months in his fort, but it'd take twice as long to carry each individual bolt (stack) by hand. (As for removing it from bins to avoid military pickup equipment going on forever, I suppose you could set up it to be shotgunned+tunneled as needed, but it'd take bit of setup.)

I see your point on being able to carry multiple stacks at once, but if there are many haulers, it could still be more efficient to let them work in parallel.

[anewaname]

Btw, side note on the screenshot anewaname posted earlier: Sure, the ammo is locked up for two months in his fort, but it'd take twice as long to carry each individual bolt (stack) by hand. (As for removing it from bins to avoid military pickup equipment going on forever, I suppose you could set up it to be shotgunned+tunneled as needed, but it'd take bit of setup.)

I see your point on being able to carry multiple stacks at once, but if there are many haulers, it could still be more efficient to let them work in parallel.

If 20 dwarfs leave the temples and taverns to each collect one item, you are spending potential leisure-time to get the collection done faster.

[Pvt. Pirate]

a compromise system could be wise. having 2 dorfs collect them halves the time it takes and so it halves the time the items are unavailable, yet it would not cost as much  - would it?

[anewaname]

Yep. You just have more than one binned stockpiles to speed it up...

My metal recycling process uses an "aggregator stockpile". The basic structure is a large stockpile (binned, only accepts from links) and have maybe three one-tile stockpiles (binned, give to the larger stockpile). Now there will be up to three dwarfs making long walks and each will collect multiple items. This setup works best when there are many new items available at once, siege and trading cleanups (and this setup can work poorly if new items only show up occasionally).

Consider siege cleanup. 100+ invaders die all over the map and you now have this stuff...
- Corpses (goblins/trolls)
- Refuse[corpse/body_parts] (beak dogs)
- Finished Goods [armor/headwear/legwear/trinkets/etc] BINNABLE
- Armor [metal armor] BINNABLE
- Armor [non-metal armor] BINNABLE
- Weapons [metal] BINNABLE
- Ammo [metal] BINNABLE

To handle all the invader's Finished Goods and non-metal armor, you set up an aggregator near the trade depot (or magma chute). To handle all the invader's metal Armor and Weapons, you set up an aggregator near the smelters. So, instead of having 100 dwarfs making a few trips to get one item each, you have up to 6 dwarfs making the long walks and they each gather maybe 1 to 20 items to bring back. That ammo bin screenshot is part of the invader cleanup.

[Pvt. Pirate]

yeah, thanks  now i got it