topic Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ? in FlexSim Forum

Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

patrickABAWF — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 17:04:43 GMT

[ FlexSim HC 5.1.0 ]

I noticed that the utilization of equipment and transport is zero when the resource is not moving. Their state is idle.

For example if a patient is waiting on a gurney, the state is idle even though it is being used/kept by the patient.

This means that there is no way to measure the utilization of these resources.

Any other way I could measure that?

Thanks a lot,

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

sam_stubbsYXX86 — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 20:07:00 GMT

I looks like you are correct. Ideally the state of the object should be utilized if the object is "kept" from one activity to the next, until the item is released. I apologize for the inconvenience in this.

In the meantime, you can try to set the state manually after the activity in which you acquire the equipment. However, because of the runtime of FlexScript I can't guarantee if the state won't be changed back to idle again as the code executes.

This is something we will definitely bring up with the developers.

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

patrickABAWF — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 20:33:28 GMT

Thanks but how do I reference the resource in my code?

For example: setstate(transport,3);

How do I reference transport? treenode transport = ???

Thanks,

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

sam_stubbsYXX86 — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 21:29:18 GMT

To be honest I'm not quite sure the best approach to this. You may want to add some triggers on the equipment itself. In the OnDropOff trigger have it send a delayed message to itself in 0 time. And then in the on message trigger include something like:

setstate(current,STATE_UTILIZE);

You might need to include a conditional statement checking whether the OnDropOff is triggering when an equipment is being kept by a patient or not, I'm not entirely familiar with how and when these triggers are used by the equipment.

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

cliff_king — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 01:25:57 GMT

We (the developers) never intended for a resource's state to automatically be set to "utilized" when kept. A kept resource is not necessarily being used or utilized in any way by the patient. It is simply being kept from being used by any other patient until released. There are several good reasons for this. I suggest that you force the resource to be utilized, if you want their state to be utilized. This can be done in a number of different ways, but most easily with a process activity. There are also trigger options to "Utilize" and "Free" a resource.

As a side note, the setstate() command does not change HC related states. The setobjectstate() command is used instead; however, keep in mind that the timing is crucial when messing with the states of objects, because the object's behavior may overwrite your state changes.

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

patrickABAWF — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 14:39:30 GMT

Hello Cliff, my resources are not necessarily kept. The problem is that they are used by patients (lying on gurneys for hours) but there is no way to measure this utilization. I get 1.9% utilization at the end of the day which is only their movements that is recorded. They can be used for 75% of the day and I still get 1.9% utilization. Whether they are kept or not doesn't affect that figure.

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

patrickABAWF — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 16:15:03 GMT

I found a workaround.

When a patient enters a gurney, I write the time on a label on the gurney.

When he leaves the gurney, I write in a global table the gurney name, time it was taken, and time it was released.

At the end of the simulation I will export the table to Excel and calculate the time each gurney was used VS the total run time.

This should give me a pretty estimate of the utilization.

I will also need to do this for the scopes that we are discussing in another post.

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

cliff_king — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 18:54:32 GMT

Congratulations on finding a way to track the metric you were after by making recordings on your own, but I'm curious if you tried using the "Utilize" and "Free" triggers. I'm just curious for future reference if that is a viable option or not. [[note: I just looked at the "Utilize" pick list option, and it is intended for use with a Custom Activity, so it would not work for what you would want to use it for!]]

Re: Equipment and transport utilization is zero when not moving ?

patrickABAWF — Fri, 10 Feb 2017 22:06:37 GMT

I had tried it and it didn't work.

Thanks