sample-model-palletizing.fsmHi,
I have 9 different destinations (called Sort rank) for incoming items and based on their destination, they get diverted to the lane conveyor assigned for that destination. Both sort rank and lane for each item are assigned at the source trigger on creation using the global table "Sort_distribution"
I have 3 lanes and each of these lanes have 6 operators to load the items on pallets. Following is the logic that I am trying to implement using process flow:
Each pallet has a maximum capacity of 16 items. For each sort rank, certain number of pallet locations are available. As soon as the max capacity is reached, incoming items belonging to that sort rank will be loaded to next available pallet location and meanwhile, the full pallet will be changed over and replaced by an additional operator, called as "waterspider" (apart from those 6 operators, each lane has one waterspider operator to do pallet changeovers on FIFO basis). If all the pallet locations for a sort rank are full and waiting for pallet changeovers, the items coming in this duration will be down-stacked on the floor, known as "backlog" due to pallet unavailability. But as soon as a fresh pallet for that sort rank is available, both backlog items and arriving items of that sort rank will be loaded on the new pallet simultaneously (new arriving items will be loaded by one of those 6 operators while backlog items will be loaded by waterspider operator of that lane). The waterspider operator will not proceed to next pallet changeover until he is done with moving all the backlog items for that sort on the newly placed pallet.
(Note: I am putting remaining explanation in the comment as it makes the question too long to post)