Conveyor Crossroad and Merging (batching logic).

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Zdenek K2 asked Sep 9, '21 Ryan Clark commented Sep 11, '21

Conveyor Crossroad and Merging (batching logic).

Hello,

In my simulation stories i encountered kinda sophysticated logic regarding conveyor and lane merging. The main two issues ill do my best to describe below.

Meging issue.fsm

1) I need advice how to connect conveyors on this crossroad (numbered 1) to allow free connection between all the connected branches.

2) There i need to create logic to control entrance on conveyor (2 in the image above) as follows:

Yellow Totes should be freely circulating without any restrictions through the model (can be 50:50 on the crossroad).

Red and Green should be primarly send to conveyor (Conveyor11 in the model) in the 1:1 ratio (red-green-red-green etc.), while if there is excessive Totes on the crossroad waiting it should be send to the other branch (Conveyor2 in the model), to allow this merging.

Is there any smooth way to do it?

Thank you so much for help and have a nice day!

Sincerely,

Zdeněk

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.2.1

conveyor conveyorsystem batching flexsim 21.2.1 merging

issue2.png (193.5 KiB)

issue1.png (195.2 KiB)

meging-issue.fsm (57.5 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2021-09-09T21:54:08Z

Ryan Clark answered Sep 9, '21 Ryan Clark commented Sep 11, '21

Hello @Zdenek K2,

I believe I was able to solve the problems that you mentioned in this modified version of your model:

meging-issue-rc.fsm

To address your first problem, I simply extended each of the conveyors until they met at a single point in the middle of the intersection. This allows transfers (four in total) to form from each input conveyor to each output conveyor. I added Zone logic in Process Flow to limit movement through the intersection to one tote at a time.

To address your second problem, I also used Process Flow to decide where to send each item as it arrived at the intersection. For yellow, I just did a 50-50 percentage for which route to take, and for red and green, I incorporated a variable to show whether red or green was most recently sent to the left route to allow for the 1:1 ratio of red to green.

The last major modification I made was to add a trigger to DP44 (first red one on the left route after the intersection) to send the totes based on type to the three outputs.

I hope this helps. Let us know if you have further questions!

meging-issue-rc.fsm (59.0 KiB)

· 2

Zdenek K2 commented · Sep 10, 2021 at 10:53 AM

Hello Ryan,

This is exactly the logic that I was looking to achieve.

I have just one more question, is there a possibility to retain global position, without rotating the Totes on the crossroad?

Thank you,

Zdeněk

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Ryan Clark Zdenek K2 commented · Sep 11, 2021 at 06:44 PM

Hello @Zdenek K2,

The reason the totes were sometimes rotating on the crossroad is that there was one of the transfers that was an in-line transfer while turning. After adjusting where the conveyors meet, I was able to get all of the transfers to be side transfers, so the totes maintain their initial rotation. I hope this helps!

meging-issue-rc-v2.fsm

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meging-issue-rc-v2.fsm (62.2 KiB)

Answer 2 · 2021-09-09T22:03:01Z

David Seo answered Sep 9, '21 Zdenek K2 commented Sep 10, '21

@Zdenek K2

cross-merge.fsm

I used 3D standard library not using process flow. It's easy for me.

cross-merge.fsm (50.7 KiB)

· 1

Zdenek K2 commented · Sep 10, 2021 at 10:50 AM

Hello,

Thank you for this different approach so much, really appreciate it.

Sincerely,

Zdeněk

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