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Lilian Fonseca avatar image
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Lilian Fonseca asked Jason Lightfoot commented

How to use decision points?

Is there any general FlexSim tutorial about how to create decision points? I've just found one regarding the Healthcare version, but as I am working with an industry production line it seems confusing for me to use...

Thanks.

FlexSim 16.0.1
conveyordecision points
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Matthew Gillespie avatar image
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Matthew Gillespie answered Jason Lightfoot commented

To create decision points just drag one from the library onto a conveyor. The most common way to use decision points is to add logic to their On Arrival and On Continue triggers which can be accessed by double clicking on a decision point. You can also use Process Flow to listen to the On Arrival or On Continue events of the decision point and then carry out logic there.

The Conveyor module help manual has not yet been uploaded on this site, but you can find it in the software in Help > User Manual and opening the conveyor section. The help manual talks more about the objects in the conveyor libray and gives examples of how they're used.

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Lilian Fonseca avatar image Lilian Fonseca commented ·

Thank you!

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Matthew Gillespie avatar image Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ commented ·

Here are a few example models that show how to use decision points to control logic:

sendto.fsm

This model uses the On Arrival trigger of a decision point to sort incoming items and send the red items to the left conveyor. The decision point is connected to a decision point on each conveyor and the On Arrival logic sends the item to one of the other decision points.

acquirearea.fsm

This model uses the Acquire Area pickoption on the On Arrival trigger of two decision points to control a merge between two conveyors and give priority to the red boxes. These two decision points are connected to one after the merge which uses the Release Area pickoption in its On Continue trigger.

acquireresource.fsm

This model is the same as the Acquire Area model except that it uses process flow to control the merge instead of using pickoptions. There are two Event-Triggered Sources that create a token whenever a box arrives at the decision point it is listening to. The tokens then try to acquire the resource and don't release it until the box moves past the decision point after the merge.

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acquirearea.fsm (20.0 KiB)
acquireresource.fsm (25.2 KiB)
sendto.fsm (19.9 KiB)
MAURA M2 avatar image MAURA M2 Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ commented ·
hello, I would need the boxes to divert to the conveyor only if the tote (referring to an order via the source) belongs to an order present in the global table, otherwise they must go straight. how can i deal with the decision point? thanks
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Jason Lightfoot avatar image Jason Lightfoot ♦ MAURA M2 commented ·

Does the process that creates the Tote know if the order is in the table? If yes - then create a label on the tote when you create it.

If you cannot know before the tote arrives at the decision point, then your condition will have to look at the the Global Table to find the order - this could be inefficient - and if the table is large, slow. If there's some other way of identifying if a tote should be checked then use that so you're not doing a table search for every tote that arrives.

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