topic How to assign down time on Process Flow activities? in FlexSim Forum

How to assign down time on Process Flow activities?

sanaz_karamimoghaddam — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 20:29:43 GMT

Hi, Some of the activities in my process flow have a work schedule, meaning that they can only be performed during certain hours. How can I program this. Is there a way that I can use a time table for it?

Re: How to assign down time on Process Flow activities?

sam_stubbsYXX86 — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 17:47:54 GMT

I would use a List to represent which Activities are active. Have any tokens that are utilizing that activity pull from a List (but check the box to leave entries on the list) Then have a Scheduled Source, that at the designated time sends a token to pull from the List (without leaving it on list) and Delay it for the amount of time equal to the "Down" time before pushing it back onto the list again. You can have this schedule repeat as well.

I've included a small example of how to set this up.

pf-schedule.fsm

Re: How to assign down time on Process Flow activities?

sanaz_karamimoghaddam — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 19:46:55 GMT

Thanks a lot!

It worked very well for my model.

Re: How to assign down time on Process Flow activities?

sanaz_karamimoghaddam — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 20:25:38 GMT

@Sam Stubbs

On top of this, do you think there is a way to restrict the activities from being continued. This is for activities that take 2-3 days and the shift has to stop a few times while the activity is being completed.

Re: How to assign down time on Process Flow activities?

sam_stubbsYXX86 — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 20:41:10 GMT

Yes there are activities in Process Flow for doing this. Look under the Preemption section, there's an activity called Release Token. You'll have to be careful when releasing the token so that it doesn't mess other things up. But this is allows for a token to be released from it's current activity to another. You can also use the save Context and Restore Token Context to allow that token to return to it's previous function as well.

Re: How to assign down time on Process Flow activities?

sanaz_karamimoghaddam — Mon, 14 Nov 2016 22:58:08 GMT

Thanks @Sam Stubbs

Does this only work with Delay activity and not the activities that are done using a Task Executer? I used a delay activity from task sequences activities with a reference to a TE and it doesn't restore the delay information. But it does work with the Delay under Basic activities.

Re: How to assign down time on Process Flow activities?

sam_stubbsYXX86 — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 14:27:03 GMT

It's a good question. Honestly I'm not sure, the Preemption Activities are a fairly new feature. I know they are designed work with the basic activities I don't know if they save the context of Task Sequences.