Limit the number of flow items in a group?

[jason_merschat1]

[ FlexSim 17.1.2 ]

I have a department that has 14 processors and 3 operators. Each operator can manage 3 processors each totaling 9 processors of the 14 available. How do I model this given that any machine can process a flow item? I am thinking I can either:

1. Limit the number of flow items into the processor group to 9 and uncheck the "Use Operator for Process". This would manage the the flow item constraint, but would not give me any manpower analytics - I am not sure how to accomplish this using Groups...
2. Allow each Operator to simultaneously manage 3 processors. This would be Ideal but that I am not sure how to do this either as the Processors do not allow use of a fractional part of an operator in the "Number of Operators" Field

Modeling note: I am using Lists and pulling to a Queue upstream of the Processor Group

I appreciate any insights.

Best regards,

Jason

[sam_stubbsYXX86]

One thing you'll probably want to look into, is using process flow to control the acquiring and use of Operators, in conjunction with the acquiring and use of the processors. Using Process Flow you can acquire any number of either needed to simulate your situation. I had a question though, when you say you have 1 operator operating 3 processors, what did you have in mind? Is the operator running between the three processors? Could you give a little bit more information on this?

[joerg_vogel_HsH · Accepted solution]

I think an operator is the unit that manages three resources. The operator isn't necessary at every single processor which he has acquired. In the 3D I would build a processor which has got a capacity of three and then activate the option use an operator for processing. This is my controlling sub model. Then when an item enters this processor I duplicate the item and move it to one of the 14 available processors. In this manner I get a correct statistic for the three operators and for all 14 processors. You can build this with ProcessFlow, too, if you find an activity that excepts a limit of three tokens at all and acquires a resource when the zone inhabits at least one token.