Dispatch by time of day

[micavega]

[ FlexSim 22.2.2 ]

Hi there, I am trying to dispatch orders by time of the day. I have a table that indicates the hours at which it has to be dispatched according to the type of product, for example, product type 1 is dispatched at 8 am - 9 am and then at 8 pm - 9 pm. And so on for 12 types of products. I would like to try to do it in process Flow but I don't know how to do it or if it is possible only with 3D connections.

Thanks in advance for anyone could help.

[moehlmann_fe]

Could you explain a bit more about the process you are trying to model?

- What exactly do you mean by "dispatching"; the creation of new items to be processed, moving items from one location/storage to another, ...?

- Is there a pre-determined of items that should be created/moved or does this happen in an interval or should as many items be moved as possible limited by the available transport capacity?

[micavega]

- I am trying to move ítems from a floor storage to a queue, these ítems should move according the time of the day and type of product.

- Many ítems should be moved as possible limited by the available transport capacity but within the corresponding time of dispacth.

[moehlmann_fe · Accepted solution]

I would suggest to have a queue pull the items with the pull requirement checking if item's type can be pulled right now.

The attached model is a simple example in which the current hour of the day corresponds to a row in a global table, determining the type to be pulled.

Additionally, the queue sends a message to itself every hour to reevaluate the pull criteria for the items in the queue (up until it successfully pulls one). The initial message is send in the "On Model Reset" model trigger. Then the On Message trigger of the queue always sends another delayed message to itself.

Finally, the queue that pulls the items should have a capacity equal to the capacity of the available transports/operators. This makes sure that it won't queue up too many transports that could "spill over" into the next hour slot, if not all items of a given type can be transported within a time slot. It then feeds into the actual destination queue.

pull_type_by_time.fsm

[micavega]

Thanks! Your model was really helpful.

[Xiomara]

Hiiii

[moehlmann_fe]

Your model is missing the On Model Reset trigger that starts the message loop on the queue. Without it, the already waiting items are not reevaluated when a new hour starts.

It doesn't have to be placed in the global Model Reset trigger. You can also send the initial message in the Reset trigger of the queue itself.