Can the seperator seperate more than 2 items at once?

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Saud A2 asked Mar 7, '21 Jason Lightfoot commented Mar 7, '21

Can the seperator seperate more than 2 items at once?

I'm trying to manufacture a product that is consist of 4 materials, I don't have the knowledge yet to do that in flex sim, so I sent the 4 materials to a combiner and went to process them, I would from the process to change the 3d shape of all 4 times into if its possible, and then, I would like later on for the separator to act as a Disassembly process and separate all 4 items into an individual route, the main key of what I'm doing here is a closed-loop supply chain simulation project, the disassembly process is the act where items have been returned from customers as if it was "End of life product", so the separator would disassemble the item into 4 individual route each would have a quality check, currently this would be determined by a percentage of pass and failure if it passed it would go to the recycle route, if not it would go to the disposal.

currently, I'm stuck on how to separate 4 different items because as I see, the separate process can unpack or split the item into 2 pairs, I tried to add extra 2 separators, but it doesn't work quite well.

this picture shows sussrsfully seperate the combined item of 4 material into 2 pairs, adding 1 more queue systems would result it to be empty, im guessing my issue would mostly goes to the unpack quantity, currently im using constant numbers, and i found anything other than the number 2 would result in no items to be seperated for some reason.

adding extra 2 seperators to unpack all 4 items into its individual state resulted in this issue for me, the first 2 unpacked well. but the seconds pair did not unpack to a 3rd and 4th individual items, even though all seperators have same basic logic, which is unpack and quantity is constant 2.

hope someone can help me with this issue, thank you.

Software Version:

FlexSim 21.0.3

flexsim 21.0.3 seperate more than two itmes

1615110649257.png (274.9 KiB)

1615110883530.png (474.2 KiB)

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Joerg Vogel commented · Mar 07, 2021 at 01:29 PM

You are expecting a behavior that doesn’t exists. A packed item has got container structure like a Container A keeps items of B. The result is a sub-node structure of A(B,B,B).

If you unpack this structure you get A(B) and B and B. Maybe you expect A(B) and B(B), but this doesn’t happen. If you want to get this in a first dissemble step you have to combine the unpacked items again in combiner. If you need help on this, then please ask a new question like “ how can I combine unpacked items from a single output port?”.

If you split a structure of A(B,B,B) you get A(B,B,B), A(B,B,B).

If you want to get a structure like A(B,C(B)), then you must compose this in two combining steps. If you unpack this structure you get A(B) and C(B). Then you can unpack it again and you get A,B and C,B.

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Joerg Vogel Joerg Vogel commented · Mar 07, 2021 at 01:31 PM

@Saud A2

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Saud A2 Joerg Vogel commented · Mar 07, 2021 at 01:34 PM

But the thing is i don't want to combine unpacked items, in fact, I would like to do the opposite, I would to unpack combined items, and I would like to know if I can unpack a component that is consist of more than 2 items because as far as I could research, I could only find tutorials or video guides about using a separator function to unpack or split 2 items when I try to use a single separator and try to unpack the component in one go it doesn't work because I lack the knowledge on what I should do in the output section I believe.

If you know, can you please show me how to unpack an item consist of more than 2?

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Joerg Vogel Saud A2 commented · Mar 07, 2021 at 01:41 PM

Then you have to do just nothing else then drag a separator object into your model and place two queues as exit objects to it. The default settings will release the container A at output port 1 and the other items B at second output port. Then you can send those dissembled items to different other queues.

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Answer 1 · 2021-03-07T13:56:02Z

Joerg Vogel answered Mar 7, '21

The default separator output property releases the container item through output port 1 and all other packed items through output port 2. If you need to unpack always 3 items from the container item than you can attach 4 output ports to the separator and set the send to port property to Round Robin.

combine_unpach-round_Robin.fsm

combine-unpach-round-robin.fsm (29.1 KiB)

Answer 2 · 2021-03-07T10:03:16Z

Jason Lightfoot answered Mar 7, '21 Jason Lightfoot commented Mar 7, '21

Put a label on the items for the type/component to identify it and then send to port based on that type - don't use the standard separator send to logic.

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Saud A2 commented · Mar 07, 2021 at 11:34 AM

I labeled each source by numbers from 1 to 4, but I still can't seem to find the separator output option to how to unpack the component to each individual item based on label name/number.

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Jason Lightfoot ♦ Saud A2 commented · Mar 07, 2021 at 03:32 PM

This is so simple - the output's Send to trigger should expression by item.Type.

Example attached,Assembly_Disassembly.fsm

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assembly-disassembly.fsm (39.9 KiB)

Jason Lightfoot ♦ Saud A2 commented · Mar 07, 2021 at 06:31 PM

Even better than that example is to pull by type from the final component Queues. That way you can leave the seperator sendto as first available and you don't have to manage port connection ranks - ideal if you have a large number of components. Attached is the updated example.

Assembly_Disassembly2.fsm

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assembly-disassembly2.fsm (39.9 KiB)

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