Brewery Model - newbie looking for advice

[brett_n1]

[ FlexSim 18.0.1 ]

bn-micro-brewery-oversimplified.fsmThis is my first model and could use some advice. I'm trying to simulate a simple micro-brewery and am just learning how to use tokens to control the process flow. My over-simplified logic just waits for each tank to fill, adds a fixed delay, and then opens the port to the next tank. But really I'd like the tokens to represent beer batches and the mash tun should only work on 1 at a time, the kettle can hold 2 mash tun batches at once, and the fermentor should start when those are passed on. Each tank needs to be emptied (and washed) between each token/batch. And ideally, I'd like to have different beers (tokens) with different fermentation times (lagers take longer than ales) - not sure if that is a good use of a label? Would love some advice on how to make this a better model!

[sam_stubbsYXX86 · Accepted solution]

To answer your questions:
1st) Differing fermentation times - Yes, this would be a good use of a label. you could have the different beers have an item Type label, then you could assign a fermentation time (perhaps from a table lookup) to the beer based on the type of beer it is. In the fermentation Delay activity, all you would then need to enter for time would be something like Item.TimeLabel .

2nd) For restricting access to processes it sounds like what you'll want to implement is a Zone. You can mark a zone (enter and exit) around Processes you want to gate according to certain criteria, such as the number of beers that can be in a process at a time. You could even create what are called "subsets" of token types in a zone to put certain restrictions on a specific subset of tokens that enter the zone. You'll want to read up on the Zone in the user manual's documentation to figure out how to specifically customize this to your liking.

[emily_hardySTLSK]

@Brett N, did this answer your question?