From your small example and description I'd be tempted to put processors on a list along with their product capability and pull from the list when you need to go from one to another based on knowing which operation you need next. But first consider some background ideas why that might be a good approach since I feel your example is perhaps a little too simple for us to be able to advise you. It might help to generalize the requirement and break things down to key questions around what we need to do for each process step.
1) How many different processes/products are you undertaking/producing at the same facility?
2) How complex is the process in terms of how you determine the next operation/step needed?
- Often the sequence of operations is named something like OP1, OP2,.... etc. and each may be part of a fixed sequence with one predecessor and one successor (simple to determine which is next) or it maybe be part of a set that can be done in parallel (eg. OP31,32,33) - or it may be part of a complex project network dependant on the completion of a number of predecessor operations and with its own dependant successors. There may also be constraints on which steps can be done in parallel or need certain materials and components to be available. Approximate examples with cases of these 3 types are bottling line, car assembly line, aircraft or ship manufacture.
- A project type of process can have many next steps and many that are happening in parallel.
- Note that an assembly line often has groups of operations at each station - but these operations are actually usually assignments in time (balancing) based on a larger assembly project definition, which has the assembly precedence constraints.
2) Where should that operation take place?
If multiple options exist then you need a map of the equipment to operations it can perform for each product. That map might also include different timing depending on the type of equipment being used.
- Single location - no decision needed
- Multiple locations - choose the first available or least utilized, or the one that has been scheduled for you (for example in the case materials needed are being routed there already)
- Not applicable - for large scale projects like aircraft and ship assembly the operation is at the construction 'site' which is fixed for many operations - it's more about where on the assembly something should happen. In this case it might be a question of which mobile resource is available to visit the assembly and perform the operation.
3) How will the assembly get there?
It sounds like you're trying to find the best method and most flexible and powerful approach which is great. In determining how to proceed I would ask what the final scale and ambition for the model is going to be; how flexible does it need to be, and which type of manufacturing is it you're modelling?
