This FlexSim Community Forum is read-only. Please post any new questions, ideas, or discussions to our new community (we call it Answers) at https://answers.flexsim.com/. Our new Question & Answer site brings a modern, mobile-friendly interface and more focus on getting answers quickly. There are a few differences between how our new Q&A community works vs. a classic, threaded-conversation-style forum like the one below, so be sure to read our Answers Best Practices.
This model shows how to model the material flow with a Global Table, how to have different process with different process time at the work stations, how operator will do the transportation, how to make a warm-up period and a Model Control GUI for user friendliness.
The three different products (item types: Green, Blue, Yellow) have different flow through the model. The first item type uses Processor Group A >B > C, the second item type A > B and the third item type B > C, which is defined in the Global Table “TableMaterialFlow”.
The products (flow items) use different labels for the logic, for information and for collecting results.
The MultiProcessors are in groups (MultiProcessorGroupA-C; Global Variable/Tree Node Array) and the items will use one resource out of this group. So the material flow defines a group and not a single machine.
At the Sinks the pull strategy is used to define which Sink is used by the item type.
The resources are MultiProcessor because there are a Setup Machine Process, a Machine Process, a second Setup Operator Process and an Operator Process. These processes have different times which are depending on the product (item type) and MultiProcessor Group and defined in the Global Table “ProcessTimes”. For the third and fourth process an operator is needed.
The operators also do the transport in the model and using a path system. The travel offset for the operator is switched of so that the connected Network Nodes defines the place for the operator at the MultiProcessor. If a Muliprocessor is moved the connected Network Node will be automatically placed on reset.
The color of the operator shows what they are doing:
Gray = Travel Loaded
Green = Travel Empty
Blue = Utilize
Yellow = Idle
The number of operators can be defined in the Model Control GUI, where the maximum is five operators.
There is also a warm-up period in the model (duration defined in Model Control GUI) after which the statistics getting reset. A screen message informs when the warm-up period is over.
The Model Control GUI helps to run the model, set views, has the possibility to change some parameters and shows some results of the model.
Attention:
Do not delete or rename the object Logo_FlexsimD, because otherwise the model will not work correct. Also do not rename, delete or rerank other objects.
