How to change processing times based on a learning curve?

[aidan_w1]

[ FlexSim 20.2.0 ]

My problem is that I have a product line that has specific assembly and testing times tied to the unit it produces, but as I produce more of the unit the processing time for both these stations improves steadily until it reaches a certain point. For example, after we produce the first unit, the processing times improve, and then they improve again after another 10 units are produced, and then once again after another 20 units are produced. It continues to improve every 20 units until it steadies out after 150 units are made, when it reaches an assembly time and testing time that do not change anymore. What I am struggling to do is to have the assembly and test stations acknowledge this changing process time. Ideally I would like it to read the processing times tied to the unit that is created from the source and operate off that when it reaches the stations. How can I go about doing this?

Any help or directions to references that could assist me would be greatly appreciated, I'm still very new to FlexSim so even the simplest of instructions would help me a lot.

[joerg_vogel_HsH · Accepted solution]

That is what labels are made for. You can set a label and read this label value as process time. Or you do it indirectly like a label value is for example 1 and you choose Process Time by case. If the label value is 1 then you return by case a Process Time for example to be 15.

[aidan_w1]

I've set two labels in the source that tie an assembly time and a testing time to each unit that gets made when it gets created. For simplicity sake they're called AssemblyTime and TestingTime. How would I go about calling them at the stations' processing time?

[joerg_vogel_HsH]

You can choose for a process time a picklist option or you canwrite directly a value or a code snippet directly in this field.

item.AssemblyTime + item.TestingTime

That will return the sum of both values of the labels.

[aidan_w1]

That did the trick, thank you!