...
Station construction generally entails building an initial stage, which will comprise a production module, and optionally upgrading with further stages offering further modules or utility. Some modules offer single manufacturing lines, others offer multiple manufacturing lines, and others offer rotating manufacturing lines that make several wares in sequence. Warehouses from the HoL DLC are a little different in that instead of manufacturing, they operate as trading stations (described here). Station constriction construction is described below.
Once a station is built or upgraded, its modules can work straight away if you manually supply the required wares. However for it to really work for you, it needs crew and ships assigned to them (ship assignment is described below). Managers create Buy and Sell Orders which may be fulfilled by NPC traders, our manually-ordered trades or ships assigned to station Managers (reduces micro-management).
...