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jon avatar image
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Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner

How can I take a personalized amount of objects in a combiner from the same port but in an interspersed way? For example I have 3 type of palets and I want to put for the palet Type 1, 3 objects of port 1, 3 of port 2 and 3 of port 1 again, then for the palet Type 2, I want another distribution; 4 of port 1, again 4 of port 1 and finally 4 of port 2.

Is possible to do it without using code? I have tried using a global table but I don´t know how to pick objects from a port that I have already used for the same palet type.

FlexSim 24.1.0
custom combiner
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1 Answer

Joerg Vogel avatar image
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Joerg Vogel answered jon commented

You can only, and this cannot be changed, always through port 1 exactly one item. This can be box, a pallet, a tote and so on. Any other port can change the amount of received items. By default there is a picklist template option that updates the components list on Entry trigger by a label value at first entered item from port 1. The values are in a global table.

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jon avatar image jon commented ·

Hello Joerg,

I understand the concept of the global table and that the first input port is for the pallet. The current case is that for each pallet type, I want it to work in layers of 4 objects of the same type. For the specific case of pallet type 1, I want 3 layers of 4 objects of type 1, 1 layer of 4 objects of type 2, and 1 layer of 4 objects of type 3.

In these cases, when I input the information into the global table, it only identifies the total number of elements of each type of object for each pallet type instead of following the specific order I am looking for. I am not sure how to solve this...

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Felix Möhlmann avatar image Felix Möhlmann jon commented ·

You could have a single pallet enter the combiner multiple times, only receiving items from a single port for each entry (assuming that all items from a port have the same type). Or you close the output of the inObjects while it's not 'their turn' yet.

Though with both ideas, I think it would be simpler to just build a custom combiner object to begin with.

Having all input objects push their items to a list and then pull from them in the correct order in Process Flow would be quick to setup.

Attached is an example that stays pretty close to the functionality of the default combiner object. The "CombinerTable" label controls which, how many and in what order, items are pulled. The first column is the "Type" label on the pallet. Rows with the respective value will be used when pulling items for this pallet, in the order in which they appear in the table. For each row, items where "LabelName" is equal to "LabelValue" will be pulled until the "Quantity" is reached.

1733216687841.png

custom-combiner-fm.fsm

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jon avatar image jon Felix Möhlmann commented ·

Thank you very much for your response Felix, but your model goes far beyond my current knowledge of the program. I would like to achieve this without the need for a Process Flow or too much programming.

One question I have: Could the Combiner be configured in such a way that, based on the label value from port 1 (the pallet), it decides which table to reference for its specific configuration? I mean, to have a single global table for each palet type and depending de palet label, it goes to its corresponding table

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