How to make combiner process start as one item enters it

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hermione12 asked Jan 12, '23 hermione12 commented Jan 13, '23

How to make combiner process start as one item enters it

Hi In my model, a combiner is used as station and and from Input port 1 an item enters and then the Queue infront of buffer(input port 2) will have a quantity of 7. Right now the Crane is placing the items from the Queue to combiner.

Now, it is starting the processing only once when the Crane puts all the items to combiner. Total quantity now on combiner is 8 and joins as one product.

How to make combiner start the process when one part enters into the combiner and this continous until it reaches the target quantity and then the processing should stop.

Is this possible? How to do this? Please help

@Felix Möhlmann @Jason Lightfoot

Software Version:

FlexSim 20.0.10

combiner

Answer 1 · 2023-01-12T07:18:20Z

Felix Möhlmann answered Jan 12, '23 hermione12 commented Jan 13, '23

To have the process finish when the last item arrives, you can just set the processing time as 0s.

If the state is important for a statistics readout, then you can change it in the "On Entry" trigger when an item enters through port 2.

collecting_as_processing.fsm

collecting-as-processing.fsm (206.6 KiB)

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hermione12 commented · Jan 12, 2023 at 07:34 AM

@Felix Möhlmann the reason is that the process time for combiner is 60minutes. In my model once it recieves all the 8 parts (from port1 and port2) the processing starts after some model time.

This is affecting my throughput calculation.

I want the processing to begin as soon as combiner receives one item from port 1 and then one by one parts entering from port 2.

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Felix Möhlmann hermione12 commented · Jan 12, 2023 at 07:58 AM

This contradicts your previous statement, that the process should stop when the target quantity is reached. Please take more care when writing your questions to prevent misunderstandings like this.

You can store the time when the first item enters in a label and then calculated the remaining processing time from that once all items are present.

collecting_as_processing_1.fsm

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collecting-as-processing-1.fsm (34.6 KiB)

hermione12 Felix Möhlmann commented · Jan 13, 2023 at 04:48 AM

Apologies @Felix Möhlmann this is perfect

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Jason Lightfoot ♦ hermione12 commented · Jan 12, 2023 at 07:47 AM

Then set the state to processing as Felix suggests and record the time that part 2 enters. When the processing time begins use Math.max(0, minutes(60)-Model.time+part2entrytime)

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hermione12 Jason Lightfoot ♦ commented · Jan 13, 2023 at 04:48 AM

Thank you @Jason Lightfoot

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Answer 2 · 2023-01-12T10:02:53Z

Joerg Vogel answered Jan 12, '23 hermione12 commented Jan 13, '23

A combiner is meant to behave the way, you don’t want it to act. Processing starts, when all components have entered a combiner. What you want to do is process start when one item has entered a processor and if last item enters the process finishes.

This feature is not implemented in one object.

Finishing of a state is a feature you can implement in a taskexecuter by a utilize task and a combination with command freeoperators.

Finishing a timed process with more items entering in a time interval is a feature you can implement in a simple processor. You set maximum content to 8. First entering item gets a process time of 60 minutes. Later entering items compute their process time to match with process finish time of first entered item.
BUT doing ending a process upon entering a last item and using a fix process time seems unrealistic, because you want to end events in FlexSim event list before they are planned to happen.

Maybe you can setup a process flow to delay tokens to finish processing simultaneously after one hour and additionally preempt them, when last token gets into your process.

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hermione12 commented · Jan 13, 2023 at 04:49 AM

Thank you will surely try this approach

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