What is the best way to model a maintenance task ?

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Leah R asked May 27, '21 Clair A commented May 31, '21

What is the best way to model a maintenance task ?

Hello everyone !

I am working on an operating room modeling. After each intervention cleaning is required in the OR. Ideally, the cleaning starts as soon as the patient releases the OR.

I was wondering if there was a best way to model that.

Here are the ones I can think about :

Split the patient flow after the intervention in two tasks : "Post intervention Care" and "Clean the room" => However I run into an issue when the token of Post intervnetion care disappear before the "Clean the room" one.
Create a "Clean the room" task in the process flow => This might be relevant when the person cleaning the OR is not a nurse that is coming back to the room after to take care of the following patient. For instance : if the nurse that participates in the surgical intervention has to clean the OR before taking care of the new patient. However, if the cleaning has to be done by a group/individual that has no interaction with the patient, then I would think it should be considered.
Use the process flow variables related to maintenance (see next pic) ; however I do not quite know how to make use of it. Again, it seems only relevant if it is not an agent interacting directly with the patient.

Are these options relevant/doable? Do you see any other way to do it? What would eventually be the best way to model this?

Thanks in advance,

Leah

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.1.0

maintenance operating room

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Answer 1 · 2021-05-31T13:21:48Z

Clair A answered May 31, '21 Clair A commented May 31, '21

Hi Leah,

About your 1st bullet point, here is an example: 2021-05-31 Cleaning room after operation.fsm

As you suggested, I split the flow after the patient leaves the OR:

In this example, the patient leaves the model before the cleaning task is over. If the patient is removed in a default way, then it also destroys the instance of its patient flow, including the ongoing cleaning task.

To avoid this situation, you can check the box Remove Statistically Only in the Remove Patient activity:

More info about this checkbox:

When checked, removes the person from the model statistically, but not physically. The person remains in the model, but is hidden and does not count towards the model census. Another Remove Person activity is needed to later remove the person from the model. This is useful when using a Person Flow and there are activities related to the person that happen after the person leaves the model. Checking this box allows the instance associated with the person to stay around while updating the statistics as if the person had left.

(https://docs.flexsim.com/en/21.1/Reference/PeopleObjects/ProcessFlowActivities/Basic/RemovePerson/#properties)

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2021-05-31-cleaning-room-after-operation.fsm (68.9 KiB)

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Leah R commented · May 31, 2021 at 02:54 PM

Hey @Clair A ! Thanks for the answer. Can you tell me what's the difference between a remove patient activity and a sink one ? I am under the impression it has the same impact on the model...

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Clair A Leah R commented · May 31, 2021 at 03:22 PM

The Sink activity only destroys the token, whereas the Remove Person also removes the person flowitem from the model.

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Answer 2 · 2021-05-27T17:47:50Z

Clair A answered May 27, '21

Hi Leah,

About your 3rd bullet point, a maintenance task is created in this step of the healthcare tutorial:

https://docs.flexsim.com/en/21.1/Tutorials/FlexSimHC/1-5CreateIndependentTasks/#location

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