question

Hi guys,

I am currently building a Flexsim model for a sparetime project during these slow corona-days. This is kind of basic a distribution model consisting of 3 factories, one TE for transport and a hub for pallets. The main objective is to determine the sufficient (=minimum) number pallets given a required service level, flows and expected rotation of pallets. All produced items is to be carried out through the whole system on these pallets.

I've tried to build the model logic mostly based on lists, where the flow of both items and pallets is controlled using push/pull from these lists. So the first problem is regards to the destination policy. The 3 factories are distributing both items on pallets and empty pallets to one another with a (for now) AGV-task executer. I've tried to assign "Destination" labels on all produced items. The idea is to have that same "Destination" label on an "OnTransportList", where the different factories (destination 1, 2 and 3) pulls the "Destination" label from the "OnTransportList". That way factory 1 could produce some items for factory 2 and some other items for factory 3. The transport will load everything from factory 1 at the same time, unloading at the respective factories, in one tour. Optimally, one factory could produce a fixed volum of a itemtype, but with several different destinations based on a global table, or maybe by percentage. I havent got this part to work yet, and a cant seem to find a proper way to set up the "Destination" label and the respective lists using this label.

Can anyone help me with this problem?

Here the model:

Model_test.fsm

Other questions regarding the model:

• The model should be scalable and flexible in terms of number of factories, volumes, number of transporters and different routes for the different transporters. Is this a smart way to build up the models logic at all? The plan is to later use excel lists as input on the different sources, and maybe excel lists for distribution schedules controlling the transporters.
• Any good ideas on what statistics I should be monitoring to determine the sufficient number of pallets? The idea for now is to measure the staytime, content etc on each empty pallet-queue to make sure that each factory have enough available pallets, but not too many . Another idea is to also measure the combiner machines down time due to lack of empty pallets.

Thank you in advance!