Problem with separator taking boxes one by one

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Julien L2 asked Nov 29, '19 Benjamin W2 commented Dec 20, '19

Problem with separator taking boxes one by one

I am currently building a model in which a want to use a principle as shown in the picture underneath.

A combiner produces totes containing two boxes. Then a separator separates a single box from this tote and places the tote (now filled with one box) in a queue. I implemented a label 'Content' that represents the amount of boxes a tote holds. Each time a tote exits the separator, this label is decremented. Now i want the separator to place the totes with a content of one back to the queues where it pulls totes from. Only when the totes are completely empty, they can be placed in the queues behind the separator.

Ultimately i want to obtain a model where the separator takes boxes out of the totes by an order represented in this table.

For now, this order has been implemented but I still want this order to be respected when de separator takes one box out of the totes at a time.

So far, I haven 't been able to implement this logic. I tried to use one list where te separator pushes the items to and based on the label 'content', the queues before the separator pull the totes with a content higher than 0. The queues after the separator should have pulled totes with a content of 0. Unfortunately, this didn't work. Maybe a queue is not able to pull from two different lists or a separator is not able to push items to the same list it pulls items from. I also tried a conditional push system where the totes with a content of one or two were pushed to one list and totes with a content of zero to a different list. This didn't work to.

A little help would be very much appreciated here.

Thank you!

principetableseparator.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 19.2.3

separator

separatorproblem.png (144.8 KiB)

separatorproblemtable.png (7.1 KiB)

principetableseparator.fsm (39.3 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.

zacharyh ♦ commented · Dec 13, 2019 at 10:27 PM

Was Tanners answer helpful? If it was, can you please accept his answer or ask a follow up question? Thanks

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Answer 1 · 2019-12-04T22:47:14Z

tannerp answered Dec 4, '19 Benjamin W2 commented Dec 20, '19

Hi @Julien L2,
It would be difficult to implement this logic into a Separator without custom code and triggers, so I decided that we could go a different route and use a Processor with Process Flow, similar to what we did in your question here.

The Process Flow we can use is a simple loop that will always have one token. The token waits for Processor1 to pull an item and process it, then it determines if there is more than 1 object in the tote.

If so, it pushes one of the tote's contents into the Separator list and then recycles the tote through the processor using the Move Object activity. If the tote only has one item in it, both the the item in the tote and the tote itself are sent to the Separator list.

To prevent Processor1 from pulling items before a tote is empty, I used Custom Code activities to close/open the processor's input. Hopefully this makes sense to you and it works according to what you described. Let me know if you have any questions as to the logic. Please tag me @tanner.p. Thanks!

separator-loop.png (24.3 KiB)

more-than-one-object.png (10.7 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.

Benjamin W2 commented · Dec 20, 2019 at 06:48 PM

Hi @Julien L2,

Was Tanner's answer helpful for you? If so, please click Accept. If not, how else can we help?

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