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el C avatar image
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el C asked Joerg Vogel edited

operator picks from rack

I have this model where the boxes are stored on the pallet and placed on the racks.

I am trying to find a way so the operator can pick boxes from the pallet on the rack according to the global table "clients". The picking must be all at once per client, we don't want the operator to go back and forth holding only one box. If someone knows how to do this, please comment.

abc-storage-1-horizondal.fsm

FlexSim 19.2.4
global tablepicking
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1 Answer

tannerp avatar image
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tannerp answered Joerg Vogel edited

Hi @el C,

You can use Process Flow to control order creation in a lot of different ways. I built a simple example that should give you some ideas of how you can you Global Table lookup to pull different numbers of items based on token labels. Here's the attached model: abc-storage-update.fsm

Let me know if you have any questions about specifics. I assumed your clients' orders were listed in the Global Table called "Clients" and created a few examples. You can add new clients to see that Process Flow is scalable.


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el C avatar image el C commented ·
Hi @tanner.p thank you for your help, I noticed though that when i add a new client to the global table "clients" and that client wants items only from product 1 then the model behaves weird. I will attach the model with the added client
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tannerp avatar image tannerp el C commented ·

@el C

I think the reason for this is because all of the tokens are trying to pull all three of the products, so if nothing gets pulled, it will throw off the logic. This specific Process Flow is not meant to handle cases where a client does not want any of a certain product and assumes all clients will at least want one of each product. By adding in Decide activities to make sure that something was pulled, you can return the model behavior to something more accurate.

abc-storage-update-2.fsm

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el C avatar image el C tannerp commented ·

hmm, that didn't seem to fix the problem. Also, i noticed the operator leaves one box from each slot and continues to the next one.

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el C avatar image el C commented ·

@tanner.p

Well, there are 2 issues :

1. In the global table when we set for one or more clients to get products only from product1 the model doesn't run properly, still.

2. When the operator picks up the boxes from the rack he leaves one box at every slot.

This is what happens in the 1st case when he picks up only from product 1 :

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tannerp avatar image tannerp el C commented ·

There's probably a more concise and elegant way of creating this logic, but I've again updated your model to reflect the case that a client does not order all three products.

As I mentioned before, the example I provided won't be perfect, but you should be able to take the logic and the Process Flow steps and create logic that will work for all your parameters. Think through what is going on and then reproduce it according to what your specific parameters are. What I created does not take into account empty product shelves, the maximum wait time before cancelling an order, the introduction of a fourth product, repeated orders from the same client, etc. Hopefully you can take the example and make something more out of it with your knowledge of FlexSim.

abc-storage-update-3.fsm

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el C avatar image el C tannerp commented ·

Thank you @tanner.p for your help. May I ask how you " pushed to the list" to the list named "Item List" the boxes and not the Pallets with the boxes. meaning that every time a Pallet with box enters the rack the list counts the number of boxes on the pallet. Because I'm building a model and it counts the pallet with the boxes as 1.

This is the model that I'm making pick-boxes-from-abc-rack-1.fsm

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