Delay based on a condition when pulling from a queue

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Talia Z asked Nov 4, '18 Joshua S commented Nov 19, '18

Delay based on a condition when pulling from a queue

Hello! My aim is to add a condition or delay to the "Unload truck" separator so that the truck can move to the combiner named "Combiner 1" become combined with broken down dunnage and leave before the "Unload truck" separator is filled with a new truck. The problem I'm faced with is that the "Unload truck" separator gets filled with a new truck before the combiner has the opportunity to combine the empty pallets and send that truck away. I am not sure how to delay the new truck from going into the separator or add a pull requirement to the separator to only pull from the "Yard_Bottles" queue when the "Combiner 1" has become empty. I really appreciate your help!

bottle-unloader-process-v3.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 17.2.5

queue pull strategy delay

bottle-unloader-process-v3.fsm (4.7 MiB)

Answer 1 · 2018-11-05T21:35:35Z

Joshua S answered Nov 5, '18 Joshua S commented Nov 19, '18

Can't run it fully to see how it is going to work because it gets super sluggish with the thousands and thousands of flow items that are constantly being added, but one simple way to doing this is on the OnEntry trigger for the combiner, close the input port on the "unload truck" separator, then on its On Exit trigger, open the port of the "unload truck" separator again.

Also you can change the amount of items that need to be loaded from the broken down dunnage by using the code below in the OnExit trigger for the "Unload truck" separator. This will set the amount of pallets that need to be transported from the broken down dunnage queue to the combiner equal to the amount of pallets ready to be loaded.

getvarnode(model().find("Combiner1"), "componentlist").as(Table).cell(1, 1).value=model().find("Broken down dunnage").subnodes.length

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Talia Z commented · Nov 11, 2018 at 05:16 PM

This is very very helpful. Thank you!!!

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Talia Z commented · Nov 14, 2018 at 02:38 PM

Hi Joshua! I am trying to apply the logic from the latter half of your answer so that all of the pallets in the "Broken down dunnage" queue will be combined with the truck before it leaves. I added this code to the OnExit trigger for the "Unload truck" but it hasn't changed the amount of dunnage being transported to the empty truck. This is possibly because I set an arbitrary Target Quantity for my combiner because I am unsure what to put here to utilize the logic from the "Unload truck" separator. Do you have any additional advice? @Joshua S

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Talia Z Talia Z commented · Nov 15, 2018 at 03:37 PM

If it helps to see my most recent model, I have attached it here.

bottle-unloader-process-v4.fsm

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bottle-unloader-process-v4.fsm (4.7 MiB)

Joshua S Talia Z commented · Nov 15, 2018 at 06:30 PM

@Talia Z

So I figured out a way to get this to work, only question now is when do you want the things to stop being transported from the dunnage to the truck. For example, as the transporter moves pallets from dunnage to the truck, an operator adds another pallet, and this keeps happening till the transporter is moving 1 pallet at a time but another pallet soon enters the dunnage in the time the transporter makes its way to the truck. Do you want it so when it gets to that point that the transporter is only moving 1 item, that the dunnage is allowed to fill up again till the next truck?

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