Hello everyone. I am very new to FlexSim and have just started recently using it for academic purposes. I plan to create a model that simulates an order picking process for our major project.
I had created the model but face difficulty getting the boxes/cases to appear with pallets on the racks and floor storage area. In addition, I am also unable to get the boxes to go to a specific rack slot assigned by “paint slot labels”.
I want the palletised boxes to appear at the start on the racks because my main focus is the picking process and I do not wish to replicate the entire process from inbound to outbound.
In addition, I am also not very familiar with using the process flow function to recreate the pick process logic that I want to as stated below. Hence, it will be helpful if I can receive some guidance.
Below are the process steps in detail that I hope to achieve:
Receiving and storage
1. At the start of the simulation, palletised boxes created at Queue (represented by Inbound Area) to immediately appear on the racks and stored accordingly by matching colour label demarcated on the rack slots. The boxes are sorted by colours as a representation of the different item category. (The 4 colours are red, green, blue and yellow)
2. Boxes on each pallet to be of a similar colour.
3. In floor storage, each pallet to hold 1 large box (represented by large box in flow item bin) per slot.
4. In DDR rack 1 to 3, each pallet holds 4 small boxes per rack slot. The rack has double storage slots.
5. In rack 4 to rack 7 as well as aircon racks, each pallet to hold 4 small boxes. The rack has single storage slots.
Picking Process
1. Orders to arrive in a schedule format via a list from WMS (simulated by global list function). Delay 1 hour between orders.
2. Set a recurring loop to simulate the orders appearing after an hour.
3. Each transporter to be in-charge of one rack zone to simulate zone picking. (Set 1 transporter to be in charge of floor storage, 2 transporters to be in charge of DDR racks (represented by rack 1-3) and rack 4, 2 transporters to be in charge of rack 5-7 and 1 transporter for the air-con racks)
4. Make transporter (represented by forklift) to pick specific pallets per order according to their zone. (Represented by the 4 colours)
5. Create the order list such that there will be at least 1 pallet the picker will pick from each rack.
6. One transporter can retrieve one pallet at a time.
7. When retrieving a specific pallet, delay the transporter by 3 mins to simulate RF scanning and updating WMS.
8. Transporter to follow pathway set (represented by network nodes) and bring the pallet to separator (process 30 seconds) for separation of box and pallet.
9. Boxes under the order list to be consolidated as a batch before being released to the processor for detrashing.
10. Process time for detrashing is set at 1 minute or 60 seconds.
11. After detrash, picker (represented by operator) will bring the box to the sink.
Thank you in advance for your assistance.
Flexsim MP Warehouse Picking Operations - (FLEXSIM FORUM).fsm
