Moving items from buffer to queues under conditions

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Jim asked Mar 26, '23 Jim commented Mar 27, '23

Moving items from buffer to queues under conditions

Hello dear community,

In my model i have 6 queues where batches of pallets are created in them by having matching label values for each pallet inside a queue at a time and only if a queue is empty. If all of them are busy and a new order comes then its placed in a buffer queue and sent to the others when one is available again. I cant figure out how to move the pallets with the same label value from the buffer to the first available queue , they all have the same label "orders" but different values of it, and how to stop the operators from loading the pallets from the buffer. I tried changing the item station to only the group of 6 queues but i couldnt make it work. I would appreciate your help.

Regards,

Jim

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.1.5

operator assignment queue logic fill queue in order

receive-and-putaway.fsm (200.9 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2023-03-27T11:57:43Z

Felix Möhlmann answered Mar 27, '23 Jim commented Mar 27, '23

My suggestion would be as follows:

Add an extra label to the tokens that denotes how many pallets belong to the respective order. Each token creates its pallet in the buffer at first.

All tokens of an order are then batched together into one, creating an array out of the Pallet labels. This single token per order can then pull a queue (actually remove from the list) and moves all items into it.

From here on the rest of the Process Flow works as before, just as a subflow, since there is only one token for all pallets in one order.

The queues push themselves back to the list in their exit trigger, when they are about to become empty again (current.subnodes.length == 1).

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Jim commented · Mar 27, 2023 at 06:48 PM

Thank you so much for your help! When a new order is created and there is no queue available ( with queuesize==0) the following message appears and the pallets arent sent to the queues , even when the queues are empty. I dont know if i have made a mistake in creating the logic for pulling the queues or moving the pallets, or maybe if a descicion process should be created to check for available queues and redirect to a wait timer, if there arent any. I am attaching both the photos for the procesess and the new model. I would appreciate your help. receive_and_putaway_new.fsm

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screenshot-2023-03-27-214453.png (11.2 KiB)

Felix Möhlmann Jim commented · Mar 27, 2023 at 07:44 PM

You still have "token.children.length" set as the pull quantity (which didn't make sense in the first place - why did you not just type in 0?).

The quantity should be 1 since you actually want to remove the queue from the list. The exit triggers to put the queues back onto the list once they are empty are also still missing. And finally you have to remove the query from the Pull from List activity, since the queues won't technically be empty yet when they are put back onto the list.

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Jim Felix Möhlmann commented · Mar 27, 2023 at 08:09 PM

I had the exit trigger but because i had the logic for the pull activity wrong it created a problem. It works perfectly fine now , thanks again for your time and your advices , i apreciate it.

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