Serially connected stations

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PT2 asked Jul 17, '21 PT2 edited Aug 11, '21

Serially connected stations

For simulating a production process that has multiple serially connected stations with same characteristics. I do not want to pull 100s of processors into my system and I am looking for a way to compress these 100s of processors and programatically show them using only one processor.

For this I plan to create an array of processors, and an array for each item that passes through the processors. The item's array should be updated every time this item passes the processor. The items that flow into the processor array should acquire only one processor that has the same index as the current index of the item.

I am not sure how to acquire only one processor from the array based on an item's index. Please suggest the best way forward?

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.1.4

flexsim 21.1.4

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Joerg Vogel commented · Jul 18, 2021 at 08:28 AM

I am not so sure why you want to use the conveyor class at all. This class deals with typical behavior of accumulation, separation and gaps between items. You describe a warehouse or just a queue. If you don‘t need a visualization, then you can manage your sequence of resources by lists and process flow.

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PT2 Joerg Vogel commented · Jul 18, 2021 at 09:29 PM

Hi Joerg,

See the attached process flow that I am working on. Also, can you please expand a little on "You can manage your sequence of resources by lists and process flow".

Thank you for your help!

Prashant

arrayresource.fsm

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arrayresource.fsm (31.4 KiB)

Joerg Vogel PT2 commented · Jul 19, 2021 at 10:16 AM

@Prashant T2 , sorry, I am out here.

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Answer 1 · 2021-07-19T18:08:11Z

Eric M answered Jul 19, '21

Hi @Prashant T2, I would use lists to do this because I think it will be easier to adjust the number of conveyors this way. I made a little sample of how it could work. Basically, tokens are created at first that push the number of conveyors onto a list partitioned by which conveyor they represent. The tokens representing the items then pull from this list using the same "station" label you had before. The items pull from the same partition that their station label is. They then delay for the specified time and push their station back onto the list. Then their station label gets incremented and it the token loops back around depending on if it's done or not.

In the "more properties" of the process flow, I set up different token colors depending on the station label to make things more clear. I also set up a variable called "NumConveyors" that is currently set to 8 to represent the number of conveyors. The process flow logic is built in a way that you can change this number and the logic will work. You can change this number any time by clicking any white space in the process flow and looking under the section "Process Flow Variables" in the properties.

arrayresource (1).fsm

arrayresource-1.fsm (35.5 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.

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