How to make an operator to take parts from a tote container ?

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raulsa asked Aug 11, '23 Carter Walch commented Aug 11, '23

How to make an operator to take parts from a tote container ?

HI everyone, I am new with this software and I want to simulate the process of welding using process flow, here a forklift arrives with a container with 3500 parts , I need each operator to take 120 parts from this container until finish. The issue I have is that when the container arrives i dont know how i can make the operator to take only some parts until all the container is empty.

Do someone have some example how i can do this?

Software Version:

FlexSim 23.2.0

tote

welding.jpg (150.5 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2023-08-11T20:29:19Z

Carter Walch answered Aug 11, '23 Carter Walch commented Aug 11, '23

Hi @RaulS.a ,

subflowDemo.fsm

To reference the items inside a container object like a tote or a pallet, you can use subnodes[index] where index is a number for each item in the container. For example, when a tote arrives we can use process flow to assign that tote to token.tote. Then we can reference the items inside it with token.tote.subnodes[1] (this gets the first item in the tote.

To answer your question about an operating taking a specific number of parts from a tote, we can use a subflow activity in process flow. In the model I attached above, each tote has 20 items. The operator will complete a task sequence of loading and unloading the first item in the tote 5 times. You could do similar logic in your model and take 120 items from the container object.

Let me know if that helps and feel free to attach your model if this isn't what you were looking for.

1691785468008.png (23.5 KiB)

1691785534718.png (10.8 KiB)

1691785613267.png (6.0 KiB)

op.gif (642.8 KiB)

subflowdemo.fsm (42.3 KiB)

· 2

raulsa commented · Aug 11, 2023 at 08:37 PM

Sorry I made a mistake my version is 23.0.1. (Educational) the subflowdemo file I cannot open. Can you upload the file for 23.0.1 ?

Thanks for the explanation! its perfect

0 ·

Carter Walch raulsa commented · Aug 11, 2023 at 08:56 PM

Sure thing!

subflowDemo23.0.fsm

Here's the model in 23.0. I changed the item label to pull the last item in the tote instead of pulling from the bottom because it left items floating in the air. This model is fixed though

Note: Another way to do this for multiple operators is to use an item list and they each pull 120 items from the list and run a sub flow of loading/unloading the items they pulled

0 ·

1691787286265.png (21.3 KiB)

subflowdemo230.fsm (41.2 KiB)

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