take a certain quantity out of box until it is empty

Question

question

gust-flex asked Apr 11, '24 Jeanette F commented Apr 15, '24

take a certain quantity out of box until it is empty

Hello, in the following model, I am trying to simulate an operator taking items from a box and when the box is empty, putting the box away. However, I run into the problem that the box no longer has the number of items I want to pick up (token.qty). I want to simulate that the moment there are too few items in the box he takes the remaining items and then retrieves items from the next box.

Say there are 20 items in box 1 and the operator needs to take 30 items ==> take 20 items from box 1 -> place box 1 away -> take 10 items from box 2.

(This is happening in "picking item from box")

picking_from_multiple_boxes.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 23.1.2

conditional decide

picking-from-multiple-boxes.fsm (141.7 KiB)

· 1

Jeanette F ♦♦ commented · Apr 15 at 04:08 PM

Hi @Gust_Flex , was one of Felix Möhlmann's answers helpful? If so, please click the "Accept" button at the bottom of the one that best answers your question. Or if you still have questions, add a comment and we'll continue the conversation.

If we haven't heard back from you within 3 business days we'll auto-accept an answer, but you can always comment back to reopen your question.

0 ·

Answer 1 · 2024-04-11T13:43:12Z

Felix Möhlmann answered Apr 11, '24

The main thing you need to change is to allow the token to pull less than the requested quantity by lowering the "Require Number". The actual pulled content is written to token because the option "Assign SELECT Values to Puller Labels" is active.

So what you can do is to subtract this value from the "qty" label. If the label is not 0 yet, the token loops back to the Pull from List activity to search for more.

While in your model there currently is only ever one box available per type, to make the model more robust, all logic after the pull should be put into a subflow. If multiple boxes were available, the token could also pull from multiple boxes if one is not enough to supply the needed quantity, which would result in array labels for both the "Box" and the "Content" label (telling you how much was pulled from each box).

picking-from-multiple-boxes-fm.fsm

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1712842777053.png (20.0 KiB)

picking-from-multiple-boxes-fm.fsm (141.6 KiB)