Jonathon,
A storage yard will never retrieve goods from a manufacturing facility. A "getting" storage yard retrieves goods from a storage yard (or granary if it's food) that has the good that is not also set to get. Even if a good is set to get, a bazaar will still buy the good. A get order does have more priority than a delivery order, though, which means that if a storage yard is set to "Get Maximum", it will fill up the entire yard before it will deliver anything, which might temporarily stop delivery of the good if it is needed by another building. The only exception to this is when the good it set to stockpile, then no storage yard will retrieve the good even if it is set to "get" the good.
An industry will first try to deliver goods to any buildings that require that good to function. If none are found, it will then try to deliver the goods to the nearest storage yard that has room to receive them and full employment. Thus, if an accepting storage yard is placed near the industry, it will receive the goods first. A getting storage yard will then send out a cart pusher and retrieve the goods, and bring them back. This allows a getting storage yard to bring back goods to a housing area, allowing the bazaars to buy the good quickly, while keeping undesirable industry further away and close to the raw material resource.
Some good examples of this can be found in Brugle's Baki, especially the southern block of Spacious Residences.
xtof,
The solution presented is the most efficient I have seen if the city is fully connected. Mines in the south closest to the dock, storage yards and jewelers part way across, getting storage yards near the dock. If you want, you can keep the dock disconnected from the mining area. Then the getting storage yards by the dock will travel cross country along the quickest path to retrieve the goods, which should speed up efficiency quite a bit.