Send like items on conveyor to multiple destinations at the same rate?

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James Riebau asked Feb 17, '23 James Riebau answered Feb 24, '23

Send like items on conveyor to multiple destinations at the same rate?

I'm working on a model that is send empty cases to auto case packers on conveyors. I have multiple case types, and each case type can go to multiple case packers and quantities. The auto case packers will always use cases at the same rate so I need cases to arrive at the same rate, regardless of the total amount being made.

I have an issue when I'm sending the same case type to multiple destinations if the total quantities aren't the same. I'm using a list and partition to pull the correct case, but I need to somehow send by round robin distributed evenly to each destination. I'm hoping there is a way to do this.

I'm not sure if I'm explaining this well, but hopefully the model I attached can clarify a little more.

CaseDistibutionExample_autosave.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 23.0.0

conveyors lists

casedistibutionexample-autosave.fsm (57.7 KiB)

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

Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ commented · Feb 17, 2023 at 11:30 PM

Do you have another version of this model that works as you describe?

At the moment you are setting a label on the tokens based on a item that does not exist:

which is generating this message in the system console:

time: 0.000000 exception: FlexScript exception: label item doesn't exist on token id: 1 at MODEL:/Tools/ProcessFlow/ProcessFlow/Assign Labels>labels/1/2

Since the partition for that label is zero, none of the pullers looking at partition 1 see any entries to pull.

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1676676602433.png (11.2 KiB)

James Riebau Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ commented · Feb 19, 2023 at 01:21 PM

This one should work. Didn't mean to upload the autosave copy.

CaseDistibutionExample.fsm

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casedistibutionexample.fsm (57.5 KiB)

Andrew O commented · Feb 23, 2023 at 10:14 PM

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Answer 1 · 2023-02-24T02:52:58Z

James Riebau answered Feb 24, '23

I figured out a way to get it close to the way I want. I created a list for every case packer and used Decide to randomly choose a list to pull from, and it retries until it finds a matching case type. It's not perfect and it looks like a mess, but it gets pretty close over time. Thanks.

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 2 · 2023-02-19T18:15:43Z

Jason Lightfoot answered Feb 19, '23 Jason Lightfoot edited Feb 21, '23

Here's a solution that reads the different case types from the arrivals table and creates arrays to track which destinations were the last to be supplied for that each type. When the next destination cannot be pulled from the list the destination is changed and the list checked again.

casedistibutionexample_jl.fsm

casedistibutionexample-jl.fsm (62.5 KiB)

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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.

James Riebau commented · Feb 20, 2023 at 06:50 PM

That's the result I wanted but I'm afraid I may have oversimplified my example. I'm not sure I'll be able integrate that into my model. Is it possible to pull the destination data from the current backorders on the case demand list?

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1676855792235.png (107.6 KiB)

Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ James Riebau commented · Feb 21, 2023 at 12:16 AM

What's stopping you push the demand to a list and have the case pull the next one ? It's the same mechanism but in reverse - both tokens only move on when there is a match.

If you need the labels you're showing the picture transferred to the case itself then you can use the SELECT clause of the pull and list the fields from the Demand List that you want to transfer to the puller.

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