How to let transporters transport more than one items in one trip?

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Yifei Wang asked Jul 7, '16 Mohamed Farhoud commented Jul 14, '16

How to let transporters transport more than one items in one trip?

Hi,

I would like to have transporters transport different amount of items according to their itemtypes in each trip using global table. For example, If the queue needs Domino's pizza. I would like the transporter to transport two Domino pizzas per trip; if the queue needs PizzaHut's pizza, I would like the transporter to transport three pizzas per trip. Can someone help me with my current model?

Software Version:

FlexSim 16.1.0

list task sequence forklift break to

shortestq-model-autosave.fsm (27.9 KiB)

· 6

Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ commented · Jul 07, 2016 at 07:13 PM

Here are two similar questions that have already been answered:

How to make the forklift transport more than one item per time

Replenish queues by itemtype

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Yifei Wang Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ commented · Jul 07, 2016 at 07:41 PM

Hi Matthew,

I prefer to use global table since process flow may interfere code performances. Also, each rack contains multiple types of items. I am not sure how to achieve this.

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Matthew Gillespie ♦♦ Yifei Wang commented · Jul 07, 2016 at 08:12 PM

Process Flow can still read from a table just as easily as anything else.

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Mohamed Farhoud commented · Jul 14, 2016 at 06:41 PM

Hi: I have similar situation. I added my TS in Rack6's Flow properties. I managed to pick up the blue and Aqua Item types (As needed). I want to add a code to tell the Forklift to unload the blue and Aqua at the Queue. Every time I activate the Travel and Unload tasks " 2 lines in the end of the mentioned code" it messes up the whole logic.

My thinking out of the trial and error is: I should replace the "Involved1" which is "Item" in this case to something that would only point to blue and Aqua. I have no clue how to do it though.

inserttask(ts,TASKTYPE_UNLOAD,item (should be changed), destination,opipno(current,port));

Thanks- Mohamedfaroo-3-14july.fsm

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faroo-3-14july.fsm (20.5 KiB)

Adrian Haws Mohamed Farhoud commented · Jul 14, 2016 at 06:55 PM

@Mohamed Farhoud I've reposted this here since it is separate from Yifei's question. Please refer to the article on Best Practices for using this Answers Site.

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Mohamed Farhoud Adrian Haws commented · Jul 14, 2016 at 07:01 PM

@Adrian Haws Thanks a lot. I did already go through the article. I thought though it is more proper to include here.Thanks for reposting it.

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Answer 1 · 2016-07-07T20:09:33Z

Brandon Peterson answered Jul 7, '16

Yifei,

I have attached a modified version of your model that sets the max content of the task executer to the item type of the flowitem. The task executors will then load multiple items if there are multiple items of the same type and destination available and the max content allows for it.

To get everything to work I had to modify the following parts:

Load Trigger of the task executers
- Adjust the max content of the task executer
- Store the destination on a label
- Store the itemtype of the flowitem as a label
Add a new expression field to the list
- Itemtype field to store the itemtype of the involved flowitem of the task sequence
Break To Trigger of the task executers
- Pull From TSList
- Modified Query to only look for task sequences of the same itemtype and destination
- Modified the if condition (in the code) to only pull another task sequence if the current content was less than the max content

I hope this helps,

Brandon

break-to-list-ts-of-same-destination-and-itemtype.fsm (27.8 KiB)

Answer 2 · 2016-07-11T15:33:22Z

Sam Stubbs answered Jul 11, '16 Sam Stubbs edited Jul 11, '16

Hey Yifei,

I know that Process Flow is not your preferred method, but I really think it provides an easier solution to what you need to get done. From what you wrote it sounded like you were unaware that Process Flow can integrate well with global tables and events within the 3D model view. So I provided an example of your model using a Process Flow. I used a table to determine which queue could hold which item, and also how many of that item the queue requests as you described. (We did end up using a custom code activity in the process flow using for loops to determine the lowest amount of a certain item type within a queue to let the transporter know which item type for that queue to pull.) Please feel free to pick apart this model and see if it is something you can use.

yifeiwangprocessflow.fsm

yifeiwangprocessflow.fsm (35.3 KiB)

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