Relocate blocking flow items in floor storage when retrieving flow items

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EK asked Oct 30, '23 EK commented Oct 31, '23

Relocate blocking flow items in floor storage when retrieving flow items

Hi @Felix Möhlmann would you be able to guide me to create a model to relocate blocking flow items in floor storage when retrieving selected flow item for outbound.

I would imagine the process flow to be triggered by on A star block, query the bay of the selected flow item, query if levels are occupied in the selected bay and create subflow to create tokens representing the blocking flow items with a value label and push to TE request list. Somehow the TE's current task need to be put on hold with the TE first relocating the blocking flow items to available floor storage slots from inside out (ASC order in terms of levels).

Would the process flow also be able to select the ideal pallet for outbound by considering time taken (by distance and effort - blocking flowitems relocation)

Relocate blocking flow items when retrieving selected flow item.fsm

Overview of my model:

1. I use A* navigation system with dynamic barriers supplemented by barriers with limited navigation direction with conditional rules for loaded shuttles

2. I use a combination of 3D objects, TE process flow and process flow to:
- Create initial inventory on floor storage
-Use floor storage triggers to push items on floor storage to StockInStorage list
-Use process flow to pull matching SKUs from StockInStorage list to push to TE Request list
-Use TE process flow to pull from TE Requests list and assign task to TE (able to set priority/ query when pulling from list)

Software Version:

FlexSim 23.2.1

floor storage push to list pull from list

1698651854329.png (112.7 KiB)

relocate-blocking-flow-items-when-retrieving-selec.fsm (68.5 KiB)

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EK commented · Oct 30, 2023 at 01:15 PM

Hi @Joerg Vogel @Jason Lightfoot, is there any advice for me to create a process flow to select the ideal pallet for outbound by considering time taken (by distance and effort - blocking flowitems relocation)?

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Joerg Vogel EK commented · Oct 31, 2023 at 08:02 AM

@EK, FlexSim is a tool to support strategic operative decisions. This forum discusses problems to solve building them. If you want to discuss management problems, you will find other social media plattforms.

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EK Joerg Vogel commented · Oct 31, 2023 at 12:32 PM

Hi Joerg, apologies if I have violated the forum guidelines, that is not my intention. Would you mind letting me know why the question was viewed as a management problem?

This question was a part of the original question, reflecting a scenario commonly occurring in a floor storage operations where two factors (distance and relative effort) determines the time taken to retrieve a product which in turn will decide which pallet is selected for outbound. I know that I can ORDER by distance but would need some guidance to combine this logic with digging logic to then calculate time taken to select an outbound pallet.

I am sorry to the team if I have been a pain and asking a lot of questions, I am just 3 months into FlexSim and I am having difficulties trying to bridge what I have learnt at training to actually building and troubleshooting complex models.

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Answer 1 · 2023-10-30T11:27:25Z

Jason Lightfoot answered Oct 30, '23 Jason Lightfoot edited Oct 30, '23

You could just use a drive in rack with default behavior - no need to to block/manage direction - the pick place offset travel is taken care of for you.

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Jason Lightfoot ♦♦ commented · Oct 30, 2023 at 03:52 PM

From your comment it sounds like you're going to implement digging logic to extract the most shallow item that matches your search criteria.

Attached is a model with a script that shows how to match based on pickrank of a drive in rack. This does not allow sideways picking between slots though. In order to do the digging you just need to remove the items that have lower pickRanks than the item you selected and generate tasks to put them somewhere before removing your selected item.

DriveInRack_pickRank.fsm

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driveinrack-pickrank.fsm (41.2 KiB)

Answer 2 · 2023-10-30T10:55:15Z

Joerg Vogel answered Oct 30, '23

You have a pick rank. Then you move items with a pick rank lower than your wanted item out.
you get a reference to all slotItems

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