Did you set the craft queue for alchemy?
If you don't have enough of the required materials to make an item, it will stop all of the queue at that point. So in cooking if you have 1 bread then 20 meat soup queued up and have 500 meat and 500 veg but no grain, nothing will get made at all.
On the craft page the number to the right of the item is how many progress points are needed to make 1 of that item.
On the job assignment list, when you select the job, a number appears next to the person's name. That is how many progress points they make per turn.
Certain characters may have penalties for certain tasks (Inept reduces all crafting by 80%, Crude reduces tailor, smith and alch by 80%)