We don’t expect the player to do any of that busy work that you have gone into detail with here. What we do expect the player to do is to:
- Figure out what situation they are in and conceptually know what they are after.
- One by one, move the sliders around until they find the spot that comes closest to what they are envisioning. This is done by observing the production stats on the same screen.
- Repeat that process if desired to further optimize it.
This process should take an experienced player about a minute.
What the game cannot tell you is what is “good”, because “good” is vastly different depending on all kinds of situational parameters, the cars you’re trying to make, and your vision for the company. That is just not possible to do.
None of the choices on the factory and engineering screens are redundant, and since 4.0 they all have significant long term impact on your company.
You are also trying to do a few things that are just not implemented in the game yet, like assigning factories without the need for a facelift, that is coming with LCV4.1, you should have a look at the YouTube videos on our channel discussing those things. 
One of the problems with the UI that we have is that depending on what you want to do and aim for, the things that are important on the page change. This makes it hard to get a more focused UI for the factory setup, but I certainly agree it needs to improve to provide more information on production stats.
Out of interest, have you read all the descriptions for the various sliders that are provided to you via their info headers when you click them? I’ve tried to write those as clearly as possible, but you may not have found the information you were looking for?