Optimizing picking strategy

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Adil M asked Oct 3, '22 Adil M commented Oct 5, '22

Optimizing picking strategy

Model 1 w. 5 exit transfers.fsmI have designed a simple picking model. The packages get auto diverted to one of the 5 buffer queues(BufferZones) before they are scanned by an scanner and placed on a pallet position. Each BufferZone has packages for either of the 12 pallet locations closest to it. I noticed after the operator completes its task it stands near the queue where the task was completed, unless the dispatcher gives it another task. In real life, however, the scanner would not stand there but rather start moving towards the main belt. Also if a scanner is at a certain BufferZone and sees there are more packages there the scanner will complete all packages in that zone before moving on to other BufferZones. So here are my 2 questions

1.) What changes can I make to the model to achieve the above two requirements? That is Scanner moves towards belt and completes one zone before moving on to the next zone.

2.) Most of the things are hard coded on my model because I'm not confident with process flow. But it's hard to make changes to the model. Is there a simple way to do all of this using process flow?

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.2.4

picking strtergy for scanners

model-1-w-5-exit-transfers.fsm (94.6 KiB)

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Jeanette F ♦♦ commented · Oct 04, 2022 at 04:25 PM

Hello @Adil M,

I am working on a solution for you but since you mentioned that you are not comfortable with process flow I recommend that you follow our tutorials for process flow. It is an incredibly powerful tool that greatly expands the possibilities in FlexSim.

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Answer 1 · 2022-10-04T21:31:03Z

Jeanette F answered Oct 4, '22 Adil M commented Oct 5, '22

Hello @Adil M,

I deleted the dispatcher and told the queues to push items to a list.

In the process Flow each token represents one of the Scanners. A scanner first looks for an item on the list which is sorted by distance to the scanner. Once that item is pulled from the list, the zone is saved to a label. The scanner loads the item and then checks to see if it has more capacity. If it does it first looks for an item in its zone if there is not one then it looks for the closest item. If there is one it picks that one from the list and saves its zone to a label. This logic loops until capacity is met or no item is in the list. The items are then unloaded in their destination queues. The scanner walks up to the zone it last picked from. The scanner then loops through this logic again.

model-1-w-5-exit-transfers_2.fsm

1664918895147.png (64.7 KiB)

1664918940991.png (40.6 KiB)

model-1-w-5-exit-transfers-2.fsm (105.5 KiB)

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Adil M commented · Oct 05, 2022 at 03:37 AM

Thank you so much for your help. I'm going through the tutorial, the current model is a bit daunting but I'm sure by the end of this tutorial I'll be able to understand the solution. :)

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Optimizing picking strategy

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