Taking parts from racks and taking them to different floor storage facilities

Question

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Thomas asked Mar 21, '24 Felix Möhlmann commented Mar 22, '24

Taking parts from racks and taking them to different floor storage facilities

Objective: The intention is to have the products coming from 4 inputs with also 4 different product names (1,2,3,4). Product 1 and 2 may be stored together in the rack under product type 1 and product 3 and 4 under product type 4. From here, product type 1 may go to floor storage 1 and 2 and product type 2 to floor storage 3 and 4. Here the boxes will be removed from the pallet with the operator and then the pallet will be moved with the transporter to the other Queue.

Problem: I'm stuck with the trigger, as well as the names I can use to send a location in rack and floor storage. I also don't know where to start taking the boxes off the pallet.

Can anyone help me with this?

Thank you in advance!!

Test WPO3.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 23.2.1

rack floorstorage unpacking

test-wpo3.fsm (83.1 KiB)

5 |100000

Attachments: Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.

Answer 1 · 2024-03-22T12:39:04Z

Felix Möhlmann answered Mar 22, '24 Felix Möhlmann commented Mar 22, '24

I don't really see the need for a "trigger". Couldn't the tokens that handle the input just continue onto the output section of the Process Flow? Possibly with a Delay or Wait for Event activity inbetween, so the pallets aren't removed from the rack immediately upon being stored.

I took the liberty to edit your Process Flow to showcase a way to make the process much easier to scale. The different types are handled by assigning the token the "HandlingType" label which is then used when searching for a slot or floor storage. All object references (except Queue5 and Queue6) are handled through labels, so everything can happen in a single flow.

test-wpo3-fm.fsm

test-wpo3-fm.fsm (73.1 KiB)

· 2

5 |100000

Attachments: Up to 12 attachments (including images) can be used with a maximum of 23.8 MiB each and 47.7 MiB total.

Thomas commented · Mar 22 at 07:01 PM

Thanks, i'm pretty new in flexsim so its not always so easy. There is just this custom code that i understand why and what happens, would you explain ?

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1711133948095.png (26.9 KiB)

Felix Möhlmann Thomas commented · Mar 22 at 07:34 PM

In version 23.1 (I think) FlexSim included a new stacking method for pallets that resizes the pallet object to encompass all items packed onto it (in z-direction only) was implemented.

(Pioneered by Jason Lightfoot https://answers.flexsim.com/questions/129843/problem-stacking-pallets-in-rack.html#answer-container-129838)

The pallet remains the same size visually because while the size is increased the relative scale in which the shape is drawn is reduced.

In the screenshot below you see an older version 22.0 on the left and 23.1 on the right. Note how the pallets bounding box on the right encompasses the boxes which makes the two pallets stack correctly.

While this works well when items are added to the pallet, its size is not automatically shrunk down again when items leave the pallet. It is only ever adjusted when an item enters the pallet because the code is part of the stacking method.

So without the code that resets the size (and scale of the shape) back to the original size, the empty pallets in your model would stack like you see below.

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1711135788448.png (195.8 KiB)

1711135947086.png (60.0 KiB)

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