Technically every item displays requirements and crafting time, but most human players will just eyeball production rates until they start trying to build larger scale factories that you can't easily jerry-rig fixes onto.
Possibly there is a lack of item-throughput figures for belts and stuff though.
Thats when you build a giant bus and select what you need out of it.
A bus doesn't solve this, because it still is contained by items/second. You can't just select copper, if there's no more copper on the belt. And you might not be able to jerry-rig another belt of copper onto your bus.
A bus doesn't solve the issue the person you replied to was talking about.