OptQuest CSV Output allocation of column headers to data is incorrect

Question

question

Stephanie Lombard asked Mar 19, '18 Stephanie Lombard commented Mar 20, '18

OptQuest CSV Output allocation of column headers to data is incorrect

Hi all,

I am currently busy with a project where I must determine the amount of resources that have to be allocated to each step in a process to optimise output/throughput. I would like to use Optquest for this as there are multiple process steps and thus multiple combinations of the number of resources that can be used at each step. I use the Statistics Collector and Calculated tables to aggregate most of the statistics as it is quite a large Process Flow model and measures such as Time In System and throughput have to be taken at different places in the model.

I have recreated my problem on a smaller scale and attached my model and output. In the attached model parts arrive, they acquire the first resource and are processed before acquiring the second resource and leaving the system. The resources are numeric and the count of the resources are set to the values of Process Flow variables I created. These variables were added in the "Scenarios" tab of the experimenter as well as variables in the "Optimizer Design" tab. In the "Performance Measures" tab of the experimenter I added two measures "throughput" and "TIS" which are gathered from Calculated Tables 1 and 3. The "throughput" performance measure is added as the Objective Function in the "Optimizer and Design" tab and the "Direction" is set to "Maximize".

When I run the Optimizer and "Export as CSV" the results are as seen in the attached "testOpt1" CSV and in the eplanitory picture below. You will see that the column headers do not line up and extra columns are added that I cannot trace to a column header.

As I mentioned, my model is much larger than the one I attached andtestoptquest.fsm testopt1.csv I have a lot more variables and performance measures (some of which might/must be zero). It is thus very difficult to see what data belongs to which column. Is there a way I can fix this?

Your help is appreciated.

Software Version:

FlexSim 18.0.2

optquest

column-allocation.jpg (124.5 KiB)

testoptquest.fsm (244.9 KiB)

testopt1.csv (1.8 KiB)

Answer 1 · 2018-03-20T07:09:56Z

Joerg Vogel answered Mar 20, '18 Stephanie Lombard commented Mar 20, '18

Maybe it has something to do with your local settings or how your excel program imports or converts comma seperated value files. If your value delimiter for decimal values is the character that excel uses to divide the values into columns then you get an extra column containing zero values for each integer data column.

· 1

Stephanie Lombard commented · Mar 20, 2018 at 07:38 AM

My list separator and decimal symbol on my local settings were the same. As soon as I changed the decimal symbol to something other than a comma it worked!

Thank you for your assistance

0 ·

Answer 2 · 2018-03-19T15:44:29Z

Jordan Johnson answered Mar 19, '18 Stephanie Lombard commented Mar 20, '18

I can't reproduce the problem, although I am using 18.0.3. I exported the results that were included in the Optimizer, and I tried running the Optimizer, then exporting the results, and I still didn't get extra columns. Does this happen for you in 18.0.3?

· 1

Stephanie Lombard commented · Mar 20, 2018 at 06:55 AM

Hi Jordan,

Thank you for the reply.

I have installed version 18.0.3 and tried exporting again from the optimizer and still got the same results. I also tried rebuilding the experiment from scratch in 18.0.3 and still got the same results. Furthermore, when I tried to open the results in another application such as Notepad I also get the extra columns.

Any ideas as to why this is happening?

0 ·

question