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Juan S4 avatar image
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Juan S4 asked Jason Lightfoot commented

Improving unpacking efficiency

Unpacking 1.fsm

Good day. Please see attached model. I am trying to improve the efficiency of the staff. They take full totes to a queue to unpack it then take the empty totes back to another conveyor.

Sometimes the staff walk to a new task while they could be carrying an empty tote on their way back and this causes inefficiency. Is there perhaps a way for transporting several totes to the queue on a trolley type arrangement (would we need to use another combiner for this?) to further improve the efficiency?

FlexSim 22.1.0
seperator
unpacking-1.fsm (49.2 KiB)
· 3
5 |100000

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Joerg Vogel avatar image Joerg Vogel commented ·

There exists the Function Break To in every Taskexecuter, which is responsible to let him do multiple transport jobs simultaneously. Any given picklist option is in its principle, I would call it static. You can load more at a same load station or for a same destination. You can load of a same label value. But a clever or intelligent Break To option must involve a forecast, which let him except a waiting time until waiting gets inefficient. But this mechanism is not part of any picklist option. If your travel time as traveling to a destination and come back time lasts longer than waiting for an event when a next transport job gets available, waiting would be an option to be more efficient.

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Juan S4 avatar image Juan S4 Joerg Vogel commented ·
Thanks Joerg.
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Juan S4 avatar image Juan S4 Joerg Vogel commented ·
Hi Joerg, I tried working through several tutorials on task sequences & priorities etc for a few hours and I am struggling a bit. Could you please assist me by editing my model just to make the operators complete their current tasks before starting a new task. What I mean is that I would like the staff to completely unpack the tote then carry the tote (container) back to the top level conveyor, and only then for the operator to acquire a new full tote to repeat the process. Unfortunately the operators currently walk all the way back to acquire a new full tote before they carry the empty tote back to the top conveyor. If you could kindly assist then I will study your edited model to see how you achieve this. Thanks.
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Jason Lightfoot avatar image
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Jason Lightfoot answered Jason Lightfoot commented

You can just make the seperator unload tasks higher priority and make the entry transfer allow 2 transports in.

Model attached.unpacking-1_jl.fsm


unpacking-1-jl.fsm (51.1 KiB)
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Juan S4 avatar image Juan S4 commented ·
Thanks Jason.
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Jason Lightfoot avatar image Jason Lightfoot ♦ Juan S4 commented ·
If, at some point, you need more control (e.g due to the number of competing jobs) I would recommend you move the job creation and management to a process flow.
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Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.