How to pass flow items to a certain number of slots in a floor storage?

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Vuong V2 asked Jul 10, '20 Joerg Vogel answered Jul 10, '20

How to pass flow items to a certain number of slots in a floor storage?

Hi,

I would like to simulate the process of passing flow items to multiple location using floor storage. Each item needs to pass to its reserved 14 slots (as marked in the figure). The operator will move an item to a slot, unload the item and can be release to transport other item. After an amount of time, the operator will come back and move the item to the next slot. After passing to 14 slots, the item will be move to Queue 3.

Do you have any idea to help me to solve this?

I uploaded my model here: OperatorWithRacks.fsm

I appreciate any help :D Thank you so much!

Best regards,

Software Version:

FlexSim 20.0.5

process flow floor storage flexsim 20.0.5

1594370346685.png (158.8 KiB)

operatorwithracks.fsm (2.4 MiB)

Answer 1 · 2020-07-10T13:53:17Z

Joerg Vogel answered Jul 10, '20

You should paint the slots by a label value to identify an area for one item. In this area you set other labels that set an order number for each slot and a value which set this area to be populated.

Then you can assign a slot for a new item to match with an unpopulated area. After that you set this area to be populated by Storage.system.querySlot to get all slots of this area as a variant. The result variant is in fact an array. If you want to assign the next slot of an area you read the current order number of your populated slot to find the next slot with a larger order number by an Storage.system.findSlot. If you know that the current order number is the last one, you can extract the item from the rack.

In the attached model I have queried 7 slots descending, another 7 slots descending in an available bay below and set a label values at each slot to identify the state reserved, area, and slot order in area.

Reserved areas

label area

order in each area

reserve_slots_in _rack_1.fsm

slot-labels-reserved.png (47.0 KiB)

slot-labels-area.png (22.0 KiB)

slot-labels-order-in-area.png (21.5 KiB)

reserve-slots-in-rack-1.fsm (121.2 KiB)

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