WD0001 Posted March 25 Posted March 25 (edited) I'm not sure how to model this. 9 parts get transferred from Conveyor 1 onto a pallet. Once the pallet is full, Transporter 1 brings it to the Storage Area. Transporter 1 picks up an empty pallet from the Storage Area, and brings it to Conveyor 1. Transporter 2 picks up a full pallet from the Storage Area, and brings it to Conveyor 2. Transporter 2 leaves and waits for the pallet to become empty. Transporter 2 picks up the the empty pallet and brings it back to the Storage Area, where it can now be picked up again by Transporter 1. I don't want to use a Combiner/Separator, because I don't need to model the individual parts themselves. I'm considering just making the pallet a resource with a capacity of 9, or maybe I should use a material element instead. I'm not sure how to make the transporter pick up the resource from storage and drop it off where it's requested, though. My Storage Area will be a submodel containing a Station element. The transporter will not enter the submodel. Its just needs to go to its external nodes. Edited March 25 by WD0001
RVenter Posted March 31 Posted March 31 Hi Wes, My suggestion would be to model the pallets as entities (Since you don't need to model the parts individually). You can then use an interarrival time to model the time it takes for 9 parts to be transferred onto a pallet. Once this time has elapsed, you can create an entity representing the full pallet. Once you have the entity created, you can set your entity to travel on a path between conveyor 1 and the storage area. You can also specify that the entity must travel on a vehicle, Transporter1. Just be careful with the travel on vehicle option; it sometimes does not drop the entity off correctly. So, with some specific entity destination assignments, you can get the vehicle to pick up the entity at conveyor 1 and then drop it off again at the storage area. (In the example model attached, you'll see the specific entity destination assignments that I had to do to get the vehicle to drop off the entity). At the storage area, you can put your applicable rules on the storage node for the relevant interaction with your storage sub-model. The transfer of the pallet from the storage to conveyor 2 follows the same logic as conveyor 1 to storage and requires specific destination assignments to be applied as it leaves the storage area. When the pallet reaches conveyor 2, you can model the unloading of the pallet and, once done, mark the pallet as empty. I did this in the example model using a variable on the entity (v_Full) to indicate if the entity represents a full or an empty pallet. From there, the entity follows the same process back to conveyor 1 via the storage area. Notice in the example model the rules applied to the model destination assignments to ensure the entity follows the correct path and that the transporters only transport the entity in the correct section. I hope this helps! Simio Forum Concept Model 03_2025.spfx
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