Limiting one crane in operation at a time.

[kari_payton]

Hello,

The token pulls either Crane 1, 2, or 3 from a list. I want to create a simpler way to do the following:

1. Check which crane was pulled.

2. Whatever cranes were not pulled, check if they are in operation. The cranes are used on different custom FR process flows.

3. If another crane is operating I need to wait until that crane is done operating before using the crane that was pulled.

Basically only one crane can be operating at one time. This is what I have, but hoping there is a clearer way to model because the number of cranes will increase to 8 in some cases.

[SCHamoen]

@Kari Payton. Why don't you pull the new crane after the previous one is finished?

[kari_payton]

@steven.hamoen the crane may be used in another process flow so I don't know when the previous one is finished. I am using multiple custom fixed resources.

[SCHamoen]

@Kari Payton Couldn't you use a global process flow to determine which crane has to perform and then have the crane action in their respective FR Flows?

[mischa_spelt · Accepted solution]

How about creating a numeric resource with a capacity of one? Any time any process wants to do something with a crane, it also acquires this resource. This way, the numeric resource acts like a sentinel or access token for crane movement, that activities will pass around and only the one holding the token is allowed to use the crane. Something like the following, where I have drawn two processes (they may be in different Process Flow instances) that both want to do something with a crane.

If you need to wait until the crane has actually stopped moving, rather than having the task sequence assigned, it is straightforward to use "Wait for task to finish" or a "Wait for event" activity to keep control of the access token until any other activity is allowed to touch a crane; conversely you may release the control early (while the crane is still moving) if other activities can start crane movements on other cranes before the current movement has finished.

[kari_payton]

Sorry @steven.hamoen I'm not quite sure what you mean or how to do that.