I had a consulting client that asked for a sample model that would demonstrate how I would approach the following situation.
This sample model needs to show a method for simulating Orders being pulled from racking and conveyed to specific lanes and loaded onto the appropriate truck. Here are some of the constraints on the model:
-Trucks are created at an inter-arrival time.
-Trucks that arrive will be assigned to the longest waiting Order and travel to the Bay/Dock assigned to the Order to be loaded.
-Trucks that arrive and cannot be assigned to an Order will travel to an Empty Bay/Dock and be assigned to the first Order that is assigned to that Bay/Dock.
-Each Bay/Dock has 3 designated shipping lane conveyors and 1 shared shipping lane conveyor that is shared with one other Bay/Dock.
-Shared shipping lane conveyors can only contain pallets from a single order at any given time.
-Orders are created at an inter-arrival time and contain between 15 and 35 pallets.
-Orders are assigned to the first available Bay/Dock.
-Pallets for an Order must be assigned to a shipping lane conveyor before being pulled from the racking system.
-If an Order has more than 30 pallets the additional pallets will be assigned to the Bay/Dock’s shared shipping lane.
-Orders can only be loaded into the Trucks once all the pallets for the Order have arrived at the shipping lane conveyors and the Truck is ready.
-A Pallet must be assigned to a shipping lane conveyor and the shipping lane conveyor must be empty of any pallets from another order before the Pallet can be pulled from the racking system and conveyed to the shipping lane conveyor.
