Set processing time according to state of operator

Question

question

Leo L6 asked May 30, '23 Carter Walch edited May 30, '23

Set processing time according to state of operator

Hi,

I have a situation where I want to change process time according to availability of operators. In the attached model(test14.fsm) I check if there is a robot down then I increase the cycle time accordingly. However this leads to a weird result where if I uncheck "use operators" at the station, the measured throughput is somehow lower than checked. What could be the cause of this issue?

Software Version:

FlexSim 22.0.16

process flow breakdown

test14.fsm (95.7 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2023-05-30T23:23:52Z

Carter Walch answered May 30, '23 Carter Walch edited May 30, '23

Hi @Leo L6 ,

test14updated.fsm

When I run your attached model, I'm not getting the behavior you described...I fast-forwarded to run a full day from 8am - 5pm and this was my throughput per hour result:

with operators: 95.89

without using operators: 100.67

This is understandable because of how you set up your process flow to change the process time. Even if Station2 has the "use operators" unchecked, the decide activity will still trigger and change the process time to 72. (This happens around time 1650)

Even though the process time is updated due to the breakdown of the robots, the station does not need to wait until a robot is back online to process a flowitem if "use operators" is unchecked. It simply processes the flowitem for the new amount of time. This is why the throughput per hour is higher when "use operators" is unchecked. It would be lower when "use operators" is checked due to times (such as time 1809) where both robots are in a breakdown state:

Let me know if that helps and if you're output is still different

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test14updated.fsm (99.4 KiB)