topic Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner in FlexSim Forum

Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner

Jon12 — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 18:07:29 GMT

[ FlexSim 24.1.0 ]

How can I take a personalized amount of objects in a combiner from the same port but in an interspersed way? For example I have 3 type of palets and I want to put for the palet Type 1, 3 objects of port 1, 3 of port 2 and 3 of port 1 again, then for the palet Type 2, I want another distribution; 4 of port 1, again 4 of port 1 and finally 4 of port 2.

Is possible to do it without using code? I have tried using a global table but I don´t know how to pick objects from a port that I have already used for the same palet type.

Re: Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner

joerg_vogel_HsH — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 18:56:40 GMT

You can only, and this cannot be changed, always through port 1 exactly one item. This can be box, a pallet, a tote and so on. Any other port can change the amount of received items. By default there is a picklist template option that updates the components list on Entry trigger by a label value at first entered item from port 1. The values are in a global table.

Re: Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner

Jon12 — Mon, 02 Dec 2024 19:21:09 GMT

Hello Joerg,

I understand the concept of the global table and that the first input port is for the pallet. The current case is that for each pallet type, I want it to work in layers of 4 objects of the same type. For the specific case of pallet type 1, I want 3 layers of 4 objects of type 1, 1 layer of 4 objects of type 2, and 1 layer of 4 objects of type 3.

In these cases, when I input the information into the global table, it only identifies the total number of elements of each type of object for each pallet type instead of following the specific order I am looking for. I am not sure how to solve this...

Re: Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner

moehlmann_fe — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 09:05:58 GMT

You could have a single pallet enter the combiner multiple times, only receiving items from a single port for each entry (assuming that all items from a port have the same type). Or you close the output of the inObjects while it's not 'their turn' yet.

Though with both ideas, I think it would be simpler to just build a custom combiner object to begin with.

Having all input objects push their items to a list and then pull from them in the correct order in Process Flow would be quick to setup.

Attached is an example that stays pretty close to the functionality of the default combiner object. The "CombinerTable" label controls which, how many and in what order, items are pulled. The first column is the "Type" label on the pallet. Rows with the respective value will be used when pulling items for this pallet, in the order in which they appear in the table. For each row, items where "LabelName" is equal to "LabelValue" will be pulled until the "Quantity" is reached.

custom-combiner-fm.fsm

Re: Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner

Jon12 — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 10:17:19 GMT

Thank you very much for your response Felix, but your model goes far beyond my current knowledge of the program. I would like to achieve this without the need for a Process Flow or too much programming.

One question I have: Could the Combiner be configured in such a way that, based on the label value from port 1 (the pallet), it decides which table to reference for its specific configuration? I mean, to have a single global table for each palet type and depending de palet label, it goes to its corresponding table

Re: Taking personalized amounts of objects in combiner

moehlmann_fe — Tue, 03 Dec 2024 11:14:00 GMT

Yes, using one table per pallet type is also possible. For example by constructing the table name with the type label. 'Unwrapping' the table by having one row per item would also reduce the complexity slightly. At that point only the Pull Requirement of the combiner stand-in has custom code. The rest can be handled with pick options or directly in the activities' fields.

The Pull Requirement code checks two labels: If "NextPort" is larger than 0, the combiner will receive items only from that port and if it is smaller than 0, it will receive items from all ports but that one. Furthermore, if "NextType" is larger than 0, the "Type" label of the pulled item must be equal to the label.

custom-combiner-fm_1.fsm

You can apply similar logic in the Pull Requirement of the default combiner. But since the behaviour of pulling a pre-determined amount per port is hard-coded, you have to know from which port the different types will be pulled and update the pull quantity per port accordingly.

If types and ports have a 1-to-1 relationship, then this isn't too difficult, since you only have to specify the next port and not the type. You can find the necessary code to update the combiner's component list in the entry trigger option Jörg mentioned (Update Combiner Component List With Labels).

custom-combiner-fm_2.fsm