Create items in tote and use operator to process each item.

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Preet asked Apr 18, '23 Felix Möhlmann edited Apr 21, '23

Create items in tote and use operator to process each item.

Hello!

I have a big model with ~80 processors that process totes using operators. However, now I have a twist in the requirement and I need to create items in in a tote (anywhere from 1 to 6) and use the operator to process each item (using log normal 2 distribution) and track how many items they processed as a parameter for the output. How would I do that? I am attaching a sample model with 1 stations. I tried several things but nothing worked out. How want below things in the model.

1) Create items between 1 to 6 qty in each tote generated from the source?

2) When it arrives at the station, the operator process each item and takes time based on the lognormal 2distribution?

3) Track how many items they processed for far in dashboard or performance measure so that later on that can be used to calculate throughput.

multiple_items.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 23.0.2

items in tote

multiple-items.fsm (53.1 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2023-04-19T09:57:24Z

Jason Lightfoot answered Apr 19, '23 Felix Möhlmann edited Apr 21, '23

One approach:

Make one of the processors the template and the rest instances of that (see Object Templates in the user manual)
Use a label to indicate on each tote how many items it contains.
Put an expression on the processor (template master) for the processing time similar to this:

double ptime=0;
for (int n=item.numItems;n>0;n--)
      ptime+=lognormal2(0,10,2,getstream(current);
return ptime;

Increment a label on each processor for the total items processed (or optionally use a tracked variable label).

· 7

Preet commented · Apr 19, 2023 at 04:34 PM

Hi @Jason Lightfoot ! Thanks for the answer.

I was able to generate items in the tote but being new to Flexsim, I was not successful in creating labels would track number of items in the tote. How would I do that? Also, where is the option to put the expression in the processor? Attaching the updated model.

multiple_items.fsm

0 ·

multiple-items.fsm (54.3 KiB)

Jason Lightfoot ♦ Preet commented · Apr 19, 2023 at 06:10 PM

If you're creating the items in the tote you can just find the content using

item.subnodes.length

Use the script icon to open the code window and delete everything - then past this in:

Object current = ownerobject(c);
Object item = param(1);
double ptime=0;
for (int n=item.subnodes.length;n>0;n--)
      ptime+=lognormal2(0,10,2,getstream(current);
return ptime;

0 ·

Preet Jason Lightfoot ♦ commented · Apr 19, 2023 at 10:32 PM

That worked fine. Thank you. Attaching the final model for reference.

multiple_items.fsm

0 ·

multiple-items.fsm (61.2 KiB)

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Answer 2 · 2023-04-19T04:20:27Z

Joerg Vogel answered Apr 19, '23

You can replace processors by multiprocessors, if you do this with a 3D logic. A multiprocessor can do at an object several processes at an item. Your item is a tote. Number of processes is your number of items.

You can do this also with a Process Flow processor which runs several sub process flows for amount of items in a tote. Each sub process flow gets executed one by one.

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Create items in tote and use operator to process each item.

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