question

When using the TASK_UTILIZE task, the "item" referenced in in involved1 doesn't necessarily have to be a flow item. It could just be a station referenced, or some other object, it even says that parameter can be NULL. This is what it says under the Task Utilize section in the command help:

• Often this parameter will be a reference to a flow item, if the operator's job has to do with processing a flow item. Sometimes it references a station, for example in the case that a station goes down, and an operator is called. Here, the operator is working on the station, and not a flow item, so the station would be the involved1 parameter. You can even specify this parameter to be NULL if you like. In more specific terms, this parameter is a key for matching with the freeoperators command. For example, if this parameter is a flowitem, then when the freeoperators command is called, the same flowitem must be passed into the second parameter of the freeoperators command in order for the operator to be freed properly. Often you will use a team of operators, any one of which can do the job you want. In such a case you would give the task sequence to a dispatcher, and the dispatcher would give it to a member of the team. At the time you call freeoperators, you really don't know exactly which operator finally came and worked on your job, so you send the freeoperators command to the dispatcher, and in the freeoperators command, you make the second parameter match the involved1 parameter that you specified for this task. This allows the dispatcher to basically say to his team, "Any of you who are doing a Utilize task whose involved1 parameter is this can now finish that task". This makes it so that the dispatcher can free certain operators from the right tasks without freeing other operators from the wrong tasks.

Then in the freeoperators command the second parameter just needs to match the one in the Task Utilize, so you could use the processor being worked on, just pass a reference to that processor in the freeoperators command parameter. It also says that you can use NULL in the Task Utilize, so you should be able to pass NULL in the freeoperators too.