Palletizing with robot in combination with vertical lift storage

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Fred E asked Jul 21, '22 Felix Möhlmann answered Jul 22, '22

Palletizing with robot in combination with vertical lift storage

Hello

I am simulating vertical lift storage where items are stored until they reach the quantity of one pallet and then they are palletized with the robot.

In the process "Prepare items for palletizing" there is an "event trigger source, on entry, totes, in rack" and bach where I count the quantity needed for the whole pallet. When the token is released from the batch the palletization starts.

My model: test260.fsm

Now I want to simulate some different logic.

I don't want that the last item from the batch is transported to the vertical lift storage. I want to load the last item from a batch directly from WH to the pallet.

I will describe logic in one example. If we choose labelName 3 for example (Blue Totes in my model).

I want to count 12 blue totes which come to queue WH and at the twelfth tote I want to trigger several tasks:

1. move all eleven blue totes from the rack (vertical lift storage) to the elevator at the same time, and transport them down.

2. Move pallet from queue Pallet to queue P

3. start palletizing with a robot, which means moving all eleven blue totes from the elevator to the pallet

4. release the elevator and move the twelfth blue tote from queue WH to the pallet

5. release the robot and move the pallet to queue Sink

With this logic, the elevator will have one less task whenever palletizing is required.

Hope you understand my question.

I will be really glad if you show me some solutions to my problem.

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.2.4

processflow robot batch paletizing vertical lift storage

1658435852655.png (1020.1 KiB)

test260.fsm (223.5 KiB)

5 |100000

Attachments: Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.

Answer 1 · 2022-07-22T08:14:47Z

Felix Möhlmann answered Jul 22, '22

I would do it like this:

The totes push themselves onto a list when they arrive in the WH queue. The batch quantity is reduced by one. When the batch is "full", the token then tries to pull the last item from that 'WH list'. To have the list only contain items that are still in the WH queue, they pull themselves off of the list when they acquire the elevator. If they can't (because the batch token pulled them) they instead immediately release the elevator again and are send to a sink.

test260_fm.fsm

You could even expand this concept further, so that it is not just the final item that can stay in the WH queue but any combination of items in the rack and queue can fulfill the demand. For this, instead of using the batch activity, the items in the rack are pushed to the same WH list. A separate token (one is created for each table row) waits until it can pull the needed number of items off the list.

Because the resulting array will now be a mix of totes in the rack and queue, the Move Object activities have to be replaced with some custom code that only moves the items in the rack to the elevator/queue1.

test260_fm2.fsm

1658477457663.png (25.5 KiB)

1658477476012.png (14.5 KiB)

1658477663432.png (24.8 KiB)

test260-fm2.fsm (211.6 KiB)

test260-fm.fsm (213.2 KiB)

5 |100000

Attachments: Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.

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