Pick from wrong side of rack - reaches through one rack to pick from another

[craig_dickson]

[ FlexSim 16.2.2 ]

I am modeling a system that has several aisles of rack. I added the racks to A* so the operators will walk around them which works ... except that my racks are pretty shallow. So when there is a pick in the next aisle over from where the picker is, he reaches through the rack in his current aisle instead of walking around it. Is there a way to specify which side of a rack can be picked from?

ETA: I found a (very tedious) workaround by placing a barrier that is larger than the racks so he can't reach the rack on the other aisle. But I don't see a way to copy/paste barriers and I have at least 120 aisles so this seems like a terrible way to do it.

[matt_long · Accepted solution]

Unfortunately, in FlexSim 16.2 your tedious workaround is the only way to fix this bug/issue. We have since made improvements to AStar to prevent this from happening, but you'll have to update to FlexSim 2017 Update 2 or 2018 to take advantage of them.

[craig_dickson]

@Matt Long OK sounds like the incentive I've been waiting for.

Question though: is there a now way to direct a particular pick to a particular side of the rack based on current conditions (e.g. which picker; whether they are loading or unloading the rack; whether another picker is on the other side; item type; time of day; etc.)?

Thanks

[matt_long]

If you wanted to force the operator to travel to the other side of the rack, I think you'd have to use a Travel To Loc activity and have the operator travel to the item's location with an offset value to place the operator on the other side of the rack.

[mary_p]

Hi @Matt Long i have the same problem with flexsim version 19.2.4. Is there something that i can doto fix this problem?

[matt_long]

Can you share your model?