Picking Command

[elena_romero_ruiz]

Hello everyone! I have a fairly common and simple process, but this is my first time using FlexSim (version 25.1.4), and I’m feeling quite stuck. It's for a simple academic use for a way to corroborate my final university project.

For your context, my project consists of two models. The first one is a logistics warehouse in a chaotic storage mode, meaning there is no specific organization for the products. Later, I will create a new model with an organized storage system, in order to compare efficiency.

Right now, I’m stuck in this first model regarding the picking process. The system’s idea is as follows: in the 13 racks, 14 types of products are stored randomly (each product has a numeric label “producto” and a color associated with its value). They appear as initial stock based on percentages, and later trucks arrive delivering more of these random products.

What I want to achieve is that, starting from a list or table of orders — where the columns represent the orders and the rows represent the products — the pickers can select the requested products regardless of which rack they are in, and add them to a “tote” or “pallet” that will act as the order.

I’ve tried to set up this process using a combiner, but I haven’t been able to correctly link the “global table” with the combiner and the racks to fulfill the orders. When I add the trigger to update the combiner's list using the global table, the pickers stop moving and no products are added in the tote.

Because of this, and since I couldn’t find a solution, I decided to switch and try to implement the process through the “process flow” (though I’m not sure if this is the most suitable approach for my goal). However, I’m still getting stuck at the same point: how to relate the order list with the products stored in different racks that the picker needs to retrieve.

I'm attaching that last version, with the process flow.

If anyone could help me or get in touch with me, I would greatly appreciate it — it would be a huge help.

[moehlmann_fe · Accepted solution]

The combiner works by pulling a specific quantity of items through each input port. With a chaotic storage system the port can't be matched to product types. So the combiner is not well suited for this case.

To get the Process Flow to work you need to: (This isn't the only possible approach, but I think the easiest for now)

- Determine which row from the order table should be used.

- Create one token per row of the order table. These tokens then read the quantity of the respective type in the order and create one token for each item (so two nested sub-flows in total).

- Use the "Find Item" activity to get items with the correct type from the storage. (A list would also work, but would require to first push all items to a global list. That can be done in the "Send to Port" field of the rack properties. The list is better suited if you later want to order which item gets loaded by their distance to the picker, for example).

The attached model still produces error message on reset because the last three parameters are missing a reference. Possibly sources that you deleted at some point (?)

[elena_romero_ruiz]

Hi! Thank you for your quick response @moehlmann_fe , I use it and correct the errors. Very hepful!