topic Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item .... in FlexSim Forum

How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 06:55:09 GMT

[ FlexSim 18.2.0 ]

This is actually a re-post from a situation I am encountering. To make the question clear, I attached the model and indicate what I want to achieve.

My model has two flow items. 1. material 2. order info

My model as now:

I have two product lines, one is standard, one is custom.

After stage one, there is a 40% and 60% randomly split of materials into standard queue and custom queue. And the operator will grab x number of materials needed based on order info, processing them together as a batch. For example, one order coming in, asking for 30 qty, then the operator will grab 30 qty from the material queue and process it as a batch. Next order coming in, asking for 50 qty, then the operator will grab 50 qty from the material queue and so on.

I changed my source code, so the combiner will know the number of material depends on order info. I am thinking of I can actually achieve this by using processers, not combiners. I don't know.

I want to achieve four things.

Custom combiner can process standard's order whenever custom combiner is in idle (custom order combiner should process custom order first)(the reason I want to set this up is that I expect less order of custom and more orders of standard). And of course, custom combiner should process custom order whenever possible before processing standard orders.

If my custom combiner is processing standard order, it should also know how many qty is needed from that specific standard order.

2. I want to set both my combiners' maximum load to be 250. If an order of 400 cpu arrives. The combiner should break down the order into 2 batches. First batch, 250 qty, another batch is 150 (400-250=150).

3. custom combiner can grab materials from standard_queue if there is not enough of materials at custom_queue.

4. The combiners' processing time should depend on the type of product is combining. I guess this should be done in the Global Table or adding a label on the item? For example, if the product id is STAN546, the combiner's processing time follows a normal distribution of mean 5 and std of 4. If the product id is cust985, the combiner's processing time follows a normal distribution of mean10 and std of 6. And I will have many product IDs.

I know these requirements seems a lot and complex, that is the reason why I am having a hard time to configure the model to fit the situation. I've spent so many days trying to solve this, and I really need some help here. Does anyone know how to achieve any of the above requirements?

I would strongly appreciate any help here!!

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

SCHamoen — Sun, 30 Sep 2018 19:21:55 GMT

@wei-ting L You have had this advice before but you ignored it, but put in some time to understand process flow. It will make this so much easier. Create a flowchart of your work process and use that as a template for a process flow.

Start with the tutorials and take it from there.

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Tue, 02 Oct 2018 09:06:11 GMT

14701-testing7-sh-3.fsm

Hey, attached you find a model in FlexSim 2018.1 that shows how I would start to solve this problem.

At first I´ve changed your Sources from 3D objects to PF Sources and wrote your data in. Sadly there was no "BatchSize" higher than 70 in your example, so I´ve changed some values to show that/how my solution works!!!

So I´m creating Tokens in Process Flow as orders. These orders check if the BatchSize is higher than 250 and if so, I create a second token and calculate the rest of the BatchSize.

All created tokens than create pallets in 3D Model in your Queues!

Next steps would be to figure out what order has to hit what combiner and send it through there...

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 01:10:01 GMT

I did not ignore it, I was told not to ask too many questions in a comment because it will make readers confused about what I want to build. So, I re-posted my question with what I really want to build. My question is, is the Process Flow the easiest way to solve all of my questions? I haven't had time to look into Process Flow, but if process flow is the one, I will make time study about it. Any way to configure it in the 3-D model? I heard that once I build the process flow, I can convert it into a 3-D simulation? I just want to make sure that Process Flow is the one I should use to solve my question, not the 3-d drag-and-drop model. Right?

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Wed, 03 Oct 2018 01:14:54 GMT

Thank you for helping me. I haven't had time to learn about Process Flow, I will do that, and I will look into your solution. Once I have some basic understanding of Process Flow and learned from the one you build, I will come back and try to build all of my requirements.

Again, I appreciate your help! I really do!

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 00:18:36 GMT

Hi Sebastian,

Thank you for creating the above Process Flow and sharing the file.

It works exactly the way we needed to work. In addition to this, we have anther logic which we would like to implement, but we are not sure how to execute it.

Our manufacturing process is split into standard and custom CPUs. Currently, standard CPUs are made on the Standard combiner and Custom CPUs are made on the custom combiner based on the respective order inputs. We would like to create a logic / process flow such that if we do not have any customer order (i.e. customer order info = 0), the custom portion of the model should pull standard order information and run that on the custom combiner. Also, the custom combiner parameters must change to that of standard (i.e. setup time, processing time, etc) . As soon as a custom order comes in, it should go back to its original logic.

I was exploring "Event-Triggered Source" in Process Flow, but was not sure how to execute it.

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 10:17:24 GMT

Hi, so I´ve extend the existing model in this way:

First I´ve add some Process Flow Lists and another source that creates 2 Tokens (each with a label "Type" and the first with a 1 the second with a 2 as value). Each token represents one combiner in PF. And I push these tokens to the first List (List Combiner).

The Orders we´ve already created, try to pull a token from this "List Combiner". The only difference I´ve made between Standard and Custom in the pull request is, that Custom Orders are only allowed to pull the Token with label Type = 2 (custom Combiner), Standard Orders have to sort Tokens (Combiners) Ascending by their label Type. This makes sure that Custom Orders only find the Custom Combiner. The Standard Orders try to get Standard Combiner first but also find the other combiner if it is the only free one.

As soon as an order pulled a Combiner the Pallet is created in the Queue.

The Pallets in Standard Queue get a Label "Type" with the value of the pulled combiner.

I´ve changed the "Send to Port" of Standard Queue to look to this label. So Queue is sending pallets to both directions.

Actually your Operator2 does the transport as soon as it is free.

Process Flow now waits until the Pallet fires the OnExit trigger of the Combiner. As soon as this happens, the order returns the pulled Token (Combiner) back to the first list. So this is a loop and if another order is waiting the process can go on.

14728-14701-testing7-sh-3-1.fsm

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Thu, 04 Oct 2018 23:55:07 GMT

Hi Sebastian,

Thank you for going forward with the simulation model I am trying to achieve. We appreciate your help. But I a quick question, I can not open the file. Is it because I am using a free trial version of Flex Sim?

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 03:56:59 GMT

I can open it without any Problem.

Maybe you are not using the newest version FlexSim 2018.2.2?

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Fri, 05 Oct 2018 04:37:44 GMT

Thanks. Yeah, it was the version problem, I can open it now. I have a quick question. It seems like my operator is only unpacking flow item once at a time. I've set the capacity to be 100, and he picks up 100 flow items, but he unpacks flow item once at a time, should be also 100. Oh I think it is because of the 40% 60% split after stage 1. Right now I set operator 1's max speed to be 500, so it is faster.

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 03:01:09 GMT

Hi Sebastian,

Thank you for helping to build this complex simulation. And I spent some time trying to understand the process flow you built, but I have some questions.

1. The order information (tokens) are now stored in "List Combiners" and "Pull from List Combiner ASC". Is there a way to show the time each token waited? I want to keep track of each order's wait time. As the time when the order received and the time it takes to finish the process. I want to see how much time does it take to finish an order (queue time+combiner process time) for each order.

2. After custom cpu combiner stage, is there a way to flow the items depends on its' order type? My custom combiner should process some standard order, but again, after combiner stage, the standard order item should be passed to standard order inventory station, custom cpu should be passed to custom order inventory station. So I can keep track of how many cpus have been made over time. So my logic is this, after custom cpu combiner, there should be 2 sinks (as shown in the picture below). One is standard, another one is custom. So I know how many skus does my custom combiner process over time. 10-4-20181.fsm

we've strongly appreciated your help, this has been a good learning process, the process flow concept is hard to understand, but as the same time we are learning it.

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 06:11:33 GMT

In Triggers there is a Pick Option called: "Unload all Items for this station before unloading to other stations". Maybe this helps!?

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Mon, 08 Oct 2018 06:19:34 GMT

Hi,

1. If you started becoming a little familiar with Process Flow you just would have found the "Assign Labels" activity. This one you can use to create, and/ or set labels. So place the Activity in Process Flow where ever you want to start your measurement and place a second one on the end. Add a label and use the

time

Command to calculate the Waiting time the tokens spend in a specific area.

2. Just have a look what I did in your "standard cpu_order_queue"! Add a second outport and set the "send to port" options in "Flow" Tab to "By Expression" (item.Type) -> for this you maybe have to give the Custom Pallets also this Label!

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

tanner_p — Wed, 10 Oct 2018 15:55:36 GMT

Process Flow is indeed the easiest way to model most complex systems. It's easier for a number of reasons, in my opinion:

First, Process Flow gives a visual layout of your process that makes presenting your model to management and others who are unfamiliar with the software easier.

Second, editing logic for groups of objects using push/pull from list, decide activities, zones, etc. is all more manageable with Process Flow. This will save you lots of time in applying all these things to the 3D model.

Third, orchestrating the timing of events in your simulation becomes much more intuitive with Process Flow because you can track your tokens easier than you can track what's happening in the 3D model.

Bottom line: If you spent a few hours doing the Process Flow tutorials and practicing, you will be able to make more bulletproof models with less complicated code and in a shorter amount of time.

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Thu, 11 Oct 2018 05:05:23 GMT

Hi, Sebastian,

1. Thank you for giving me some instructions, but after spending several hours into it, we still could not achieve adding a label "time" to each token and keep track of it's process time. I tried to use the add labels activity. But it did not work.

2. I have another question, during the simulation, in which stage does the token waits? In the picture below, there are 2 queues. Which one shows the time it takes before it got process? In the end, there is a "custom code" section, how does this section plays a role in the process flow?

3. I and my teammates have spent so many hours trying to make further configuration. But we could not make any step further. We really want to achieve the "dynamic process time". That is, the process time in the combiner should change depending on the batch size. For example, if the batch size is 0~100, the process time is 0.07, if the batch size is 100~150, then the process time is 0.12. Something like that. We tried to use the batch processing function, but it did not work. We also tried to exchange the label name of "BatchSize" and "Quantity". But it did not work as well. Can you advise how should we proceed? We are so stressed now.

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Fri, 12 Oct 2018 09:04:53 GMT

Hey,

1. You can name the Label "time" but "time" is also a Method in FlexSim. So at first it would be better to name labels with a capital letter (methods never start with that) and second you should try to give the labels names that help you figure out what the label is about even later in your model. The function you are looking for is not:

token.time

what gives you a pointer to the label on the token and returns the value. Because you are setting the label the first time here, there is no value! But

time

so your Assign Label should look like similar to this:

From this point you can reference with

token.Durchlaufzeit

to the value on the label!

2. The first red circle shows the point, where an order tryes to find a machine. The pallet is not created yet. So only the order is buffered. So this makes sure, there is only one pallet created ant this as soon as it can go to the machine that is free.

The custom Code in the End does not do anything but is a buffer (for me in this case) to hold tokens so you can built the next steps from here. If you don´t need the tokens any more, you could also add a sink and destroy them.

3. For this part there seems to be no fitting pickoption available in Standard FlexSim. So I see at least 2 different easy ways to do it:

First: depending on the BatchSize you are getting in ProcessFlow, take a decide that sends the token to different "assign label" activitys and add a label to the token that stores the ProcessTime you want. Than you can copy this label to the pallet (like we do with the BatchSize in the "create object" activity) and only have to use:

item.ProcessTime

in the Process Time field of your combiner!

Second: You could code a small statement in the Processtime field of the combiner that would have to look something like this (not finished example!!!):

int i_BatchSize = item.BatchSize;

if(i_BatchSize <= 100)
{
	return 0.07;
}
else
{
	if(i_BatchSize <= 150)
	{
		return 0.12;
	}
}

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 05:54:25 GMT

Hi Sebastian,

Thank for guiding us, I've tried assigning time and type to the tokens, but it is not working.

1. According to your advice, "time" should be used when assigning labels. Can you see my picture and my model to see which part is not correct? The picture below shows my assigned token setting. But it is not working.

I really want to achieve the above setting, can you advise how should I proceed with this? we've tried using what you advised.

I also attached my model here. Can you take a look?10-16-20181.fsm

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Wed, 17 Oct 2018 13:42:27 GMT

Hi,

1. you are right, for most of your tokens there is no Type and no time label. This is because most of your tokens don´t go through the "Assign Labels on Token" activity because their Batchsize is smaller than 250. Your solution should look like:

Also, if you are only writing text in a label Value field, FlexSim does not know what you want it to do.

Setting the "Type" label to a value = Standard CPU does only affect failure messages!

time;

is a Methode FlexSim does know and so it returnsa number value -> the actual simulation time when the event is done!

2. If you are setting your Type label to

value = 1 if it should go to a Standard CPU and to

value = 2 if it should go to the Custom CPU

Everything should work fine, because in the actual 3D Model (and objects) only a number is needed to figure out what port should be used.

By the way, if you really want to control stuff by strings, use " " around your string! So FlexSim does know that you are writing text to a label. But using strings will affect much more effort to your model 😉

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

wei_ting_l — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 06:29:43 GMT

Hi Sebastian,

Thanks for your advice, I was able to assign labels ("time" and "type") to tokens. But I have a few more questions that I want to address and hopefully, you can help me with that.

1. Right now my custom combiner process both custom cpus and standard cpus, it sends cpus to inventory racks depends on the item type. I was able to achieve this logic by only changing my combine mode to "pack". ("Batch" mode does not work). So right now the "CurContent" in my rack is the number of batches processed, it is not the total qty of cpu. My question is, is there a way to see how many qty is in each pack/batch that got stored in the rack? Like an Excel table showing that a particular batch contains how many qty of cpus, and that is a standard/custom order. Is there a way to track the order info in the rack?

I was able to assign time and type labels to a token, but I want to export the token's data, is there a way to do it? So I can analyze the queue time for each token.

My "WIP by Type" dashboard is not working as the way I wanted. can you help to see what I can do?

4. In the previous post, you mentioned the "for loops" of process time depends on batchSize. I tried to understand it, but I could not figure it out, can you help me with that again? I know the logic is to write a code, but I do not know the parameter and names used in the code. Can you help me with this again?

int i_BatchSize = item.BatchSize;

if(i_BatchSize <= 100)
{
	return 0.07;
}
else
{
	if(i_BatchSize <= 150)
	{
		return 0.12;
	}
}

5. I want to add one more logic, the downtime of each machine. I researched other posts, but could not find a place where I can edit the downtime of machines. Can you help me with this? The simulation is running 100% of the time, but we know that in reality, there is a scheduled maintenance of machines, so machines do not run 100% of the time. I want a 20% downtime for each machine. Can you advice where I can use this?

Thanks! You have been trying to help us and educating us on using Flexsim, we want to learn, too. That is why after we tried something, it did not work, we ask for your advises again. We strongly appreciate your help. I've also attached my model here as a reference.

10-16-20181.fsm

Re: How to set limit on combiner, making priority on orders, and grab flow item ....

sebastian_hemmannE3JAU — Thu, 18 Oct 2018 06:48:48 GMT

Hey,

is there nobody in your country that can give you a training or consulting? Because most of your questions are very basic FlexSim understanding stuff!

Just had a look into your questions. It will take some time to answer all this questions and I´m quite sure because you are asking many different questions in only one thread, only users will try to answer, that have time and answers to all of your questions.

So I hope to find time to answer all your question within this week, but can´t promise!

If you want answers faster, think about the hint @Jörg Vogel gave you and split your questions to different Threads. As you did with the "setup time in batch" stuff.