Restricting Flowitems on Processors

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Nicholas D2 asked Jan 11 2021 at 7:29 PM Jeanette F edited Feb 01 2021 at 9:00 PM

Restricting Flowitems on Processors

My model simulates the testing process for a particular product. The problem I am having occurs in WorkCenter899. The queue is set up to try to batch units in sets of 8, Thermal1 has a max content of 8, and Thermal2 has a max content of 4. I want batching to occur whenever possible, but once a flowitem or set of flowitems enters a processor, I don't want any other flowitems to enter the processor until the first flowitem or batch finishes processing. I can think of how this could be done using a Resource in Flow Logic, but is there a way to do it using on 3D Logic, since my model is currently driven by 3D Logic?

MPM-2000 Testing Model_3D Logic_v1.fsm

Software Version:

FlexSim 20.1.2

flexsim 20.1.2 processors batch processing

mpm-2000-testing-model-3d-logic-v1.fsm (62.6 KiB)

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Answer 1 · 2021-01-12T21:41:51Z

Jeanette F answered Jan 12 2021 at 9:41 PM Jeanette F edited Feb 01 2021 at 9:00 PM

The only adjustment to your model that would prevent flowitems from entering a processor when it is already processing a flowitem would be to remove your maxtime limit on the queue. This would only allow batches of the max quantity onto the processor though. This does not seem to be a good solution to your model because then items are left in the queue.

Your idea for Process Flow would be the best line of action from here. Which like @jason.lightfoot mentioned is a tool to be used with your model and I wouldn't limit yourself from it because a majority of your other logic is in the 3D objects.

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Nicholas D2 commented · Jan 21 2021 at 12:27 AM

Jeanette,

I've started to develop process flow logic, but I am using a new file.

I hoped to be able to solve this problem using resources in process flow, but I also need to have multiple processors in my process, and if I use Move Object activities, then I can only have one output connector. This seems to bring me back to 3D logic. How can I solve this problem?

Lastly, in the Batch activity in the process flow, when the batch size reaches four, it only releases the same number of tokens as there are resources, instead of releasing four tokens and moving four flowitems to the processor. Why is this?

Using Resources on Processors_v3 with Routing.fsm

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using-resources-on-processors-v3-with-routing.fsm (52.0 KiB)

Jeanette F ♦♦ Nicholas D2 commented · Jan 23 2021 at 3:14 AM

Hello @Nicholas D2,

I focused on your middle set of processors. Your process flow took over all the logic, when it would be better to just move what isn't working in your 3D model objects logic to process flow. In this case, just your batching was what was being difficult. So, I adjusted your process flow to only handle the batching from the queue to the processors and I also reconnected 3D objects to have the logic they had before.

I also created an entirely new process flow for you to look at. The process flow mainly uses the tokens to be the processors. This allows for the tokens to hold a label with the max content of the processors which is then used to decide how many items to pull from the queue. This also guarantees that only one batch of items is in the processor at once. What this process flow does that is better than the other is that it can still allow for items to be processed even if the max batching is not met. It takes the max or what is available and starts the process. You can always add a max wait timer if you would like the processor tokens to wait a little to try and reach their max content before starting processing.

Please review the updated model.

using-resources-on-processors-v3-with-routing _v1.fsm

Also to answer your questions about your model from above,

1) I think exploring the drop down options in the move object activity will help you see conditional decides and other things to broaden its capability. You can also integrate the 3D logic and process flow more like I showed in the adjustments.

2) The batch activity did release 4 tokens, but each token would then acquire its own processor. Since there were only two processors, only two tokens moved forward while the other two had to wait. This was not at all what you were going for and an alternative solution would be to release one token with the item labels aggregated into an array like I did in option 1 of your process flows

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using-resources-on-processors-v3-with-routing-v1.fsm (56.5 KiB)

Nicholas D2 Jeanette F ♦♦ commented · Jan 25 2021 at 8:28 PM

Jeannette, this is definitely getting closer to what I am trying to accomplish. One more question for you. If the flowitems that enter the processors are being batched based on the max content of the processor, and some of the items in a batch are reworked items (red), what makes the flowitem on the processor appear red? In other words, some batches seem to contain reworked items and appear brown while other batches contain reworked items but appear red. Just curious why this is.

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