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Hi all! I am simulating a facility with nearly 40 servers, each one starting with some entities in the input node at initialization and having a different capacity. Each server has a 0 input buffer capacity. My entity creation is currently set to having an interarrival time to be 4.33 weeks (1 month) with a random number of entities created. Currently, it runs 24/7 and does not care about the time, but I want to incorporate that. How can I make it so that the entities arrive once a month, let's say the first Monday, at 8am? How can I make it so the servers are only processing between 8am and 4pm Monday - Friday? The work schedule doesn't seem to work for me, but I could be doing it wrong, since I have a 0 input buffer, which I can't change as it's part of my routing logic for overflow. I would be happy with using timers or a process logic if someone can explain it to me. Ideally, the entities only arrive when it's during the working time, and the entities remaining after 4pm are just put on hold until 8am the next day. Thanks in advance!

I'm making a call center simio model. The 7 types of calls are generated at sources and then move down a path to a server. This server represents a queue that is formed at the call center. After the queue server the calls are transferred to 1 of 7 desks (which are represented by a server) where a call agent is working. How do I make it so the calls do not go to one of the server desks until a desk becomes available. As it currently stands the calls go right through the queue server and build up at some desks even if there are free desks available.

You want to make the servers have a Capacity Type of Schedule and follow the default Standard Week. If you don't want to give them a lunch break, just change the definition of the Standard Day. Leave the default Off Shift Rule of Suspend Processing. The easiest approach for arrivals is to have a Source with an Interarrival time of 4.33 weeks (or 4 weeks) and an integer random distribution for the Entities Per Arrival. Doing a "first Monday" is possible, but a bit complicated because Simio time does not have the concept of Month because months are of varying size. You could probably specify the initial Time Offset to be early in a month, then maybe make the interarrival time be something like DateTime.DaysInMonth(DateTime.Month(Timenow),DateTime.Year(TimeNow)) which would make the next arrival be exactly one month later (same day of the month). When you say you have no buffers, what do you mean? If an entity arrives when all servers are busy, should it be balked (possibly disposed) or should it wait somewhere like on the server input node, on a path or in the Source output node? If the above arrival approach isn't exact enough, you can put exact arrivals in a data table. The arrival time could be specified at any exact datetime you desire and still have the Entities Per Arrival be a distribution.

I have a project where I want to model aircraft moving around an area of a fake map. The only map options I've seen in simio are the ArcGIS World View and Street map under View -> Map View. I uploaded a picture as a symbol and set it as a layer, but when I do that certain areas of the map work and others don't. It's like the map area is 'too busy' and it automatically declutters, which in this case hides aircraft moving in certain areas of the map. I tried to zoom in on areas and the map works as advertised, but for demonstration purposes, I need to have all traffic on the map appear at all times (as if I had a map selected under map view). This wouldn't be a problem if I could set an image as a "background color." Any suggestions?

Hello everyone, I have a server which can potentially have many entities waiting in the input queue. All these entities have different priorities (as a model entity state variable). I want to retrieve these values to then select the highest one and put it on a status label to track this during the run. Is there an option to do this? Regards, MF

Hello there, this is my first post here and I hope someone can help me with my problem. I´m quite new to Simio and working on my first project. I have some "return entities" that are considered "bad" at the end of the production. So they will get collected in a server which is used as a storage and get returned to the factory every 24 hours, to get reworked, if there is capacity left. Now, I want to check if there is capacity left in the destinated server and in best case, reserve the needed capacity before, before I route these entities towards it. After the entity arrived in the server, the reserved capacity should get released again. I couldn´t find a good example here in the forum or via google search, as in the SimBits, how to solve this the correct way. Maybe someone here can give me a tip, how to. Thanks in advance. Aljonator

Hi, there is a simple approach you can use. Use Connectors between the queue server and the desks. At Buffer Logic of the Desks, change the Input Buffer Capacity to 0. Create a List with the Input nodes of the seven Desks. On the Output of the queue server change Entity Destination Type to Select From List and the goal to Smallest Value. Keep the default expression. It should work fine.

hello :), I'm trying to make a model with three servers. Everyone uses different Workers type and have different operation time per entity (no problem in these points). The difficult part is the next, every work center (server) has a different setup and changeover, and both happens without the presence of the entity. I mean the setup of some servers starts when the entity is created, (before the arrival to that server), and after the operation the changeover has to be done, in both cases we need to use or assing a worker. How can I do that?

First of all, Thank you so much for the answer in advance, but could I bother anyone who answers with some example model or picture of the method I am still new to SIMIO, so I am concerned about following the advice correctly. 1) Let's say every day I have X number of people arriving( using distribution to generate numbers outside SIMIO randomly). This is the shop where people visit from 8.00 to 20.00 every day with different visit rates per hour (example as below), and I use X to time to this percentage so I can get the exact number of visits per hour. The problem is I want to make an arrival interval random with some sort of function/distribution or table(excel calculation), not a stable arrival rate. My idea is random from 0 to 1 and gives the random number (Y) to match with X outside SIMIO and put the whole table in, but I wonder, is there any better method than this? 2) The second question is about two entities from different sources, A and B. A and B will go through the same server for three servers, but after server 3, one will go to 4, and one will go to 5. Can you give me any advice on how to do that

Hello all I am relatively new to Simio and DES. I am trying to model a pallet conveyor. It is a closed loop conveyor. I use the "vehicle" as the pallet that loops around the conveyor. At the source the part (default entity) is loaded on the pallet. At the sink the part is unloaded. The problem that I am encountering is that the vehicles from time to time pile up at the sink, then after a certain amount of time they continue back to the starting point "Source1". This happens more the more I increas the "initialnumber in system" of vehicles The transfer-in Time for the sink is set at 0. At the model trace I read this for the "Input@Sink1" : "the in Token waiting at VisitNode step for '1' other processes to complete." I would apreciate any advice. Many thanks! Vehicle_stuck_at_sink.spfx

Happy new year! One thing that I noticed is that with this model, the server never have a state of "blocked". I increased the processing time of Server2 and added a status pie to Server1. The server 1 is either Processing or starved, but never blocked according to the pie. But it should be blocked part of the time since I increased the processing time of Server2 to force this. It looks like the Server1 only accepts a new item to process if the path between Server1 and Server2 has room for at least one more vehicle. So the time that it should be blocked is considered as part of the "Starved" instead. I tried to figure out why this happens without success. Anyone knows why this happens? I attach the model to the post. Thank you! Input Server1 not blocked.spfx

Hi , I have a system with a combiner, that combines different variations of batches. On exiting the combiner the crane picks the combined entity up and drops up at a server. Each of the different batches will have a different load and unload time. Is there a way to do this? Basically, does batch contain product ‘A’ if so crane time is ‘X Mins’ Does batch contain product ‘B’ if so crane time is ‘Y Mins’ Thanks for any help!

Hi everyone, I am trying to model entities moving from 10 origins (sources) to 10 destinations (sinks). The entities are simultaneously created according to a certain mix (Entity1 (85%), Entity2 (10%), and Entity3 (5%). However, the number of entities created per event is according to a certain distribution. There is an OD-matrix that captures the number of entities moving from origin to a specific destination. Let's say there are 10 destinations, than the destinations of the Entities are determined according to the OD-matrix: Entity1 and Entity2 can move to any of of the sinks. Entity3 can only move to one specific sink. One solution I came up with was to add weights to Connectors and assign destinations using TransferNodes, but I think that this is very inefficient. I then started to work with DataTables, but I cannot figure out how to probabilistically assign the destinations of the entities. My question is: how to model the probabilistic destination assignment of Entities using DataTables in such a way that it is relatively easy and flexible to add or remove Sources/Sinks? I have added the model for you to see, I hope that you can help me! Many thanks in advance Simple_OD_creation.spfx

Ok, I think that I sort it out. I am not very confident of what I do but I think that it works now: I changed the Vehivle "Routing Logic". Idle action: Go to home AND I changed for every server, secondary resources: Earlier it did not work because the vehicle was stuck at the sink waiting for an entity to be available at the source. The idle action for the vehicle was to "Park at home"..

I have a table that allowcate 5 gates will have different entity will launch in specify date and time. How can i do it ? We are designing a airport simulate aircraft departure its gate.

I am doing a Final Year Project with Simio. Our topic is discusing the taxiway routing problem to enhance aircraft congustion in the taxiway. Our group are the new to use simio, when we want to do some simulation on the taxiway, we dont know how to increse the same distence between different space of the entity(ie. airplane) in the path(ie. Taxiway). Also how to make the entity stay in the path while waiting the privious plane leave the runway? We would like to do the silulation like this video https://www.simio.com/applications/airports-and-airlines-simulation-software/ 1:08-1:30 Any one can help us?

Hi, I have a production line with 2 sources. The arrival of entity A in source 1 triggers an arrival of entity B in source 2. Entity A and entity B then enter their respective servers for a processing time. Entity A is processed at table_openings between 10 and 15 minutes with probabilities whereas Entity B is processed at table_MF for 10 minutes. The process type is task sequence. Both Entity join at a combiner. Entity A is the parent and Entity B is the member. Afterwards, the combined entity continue along the production line. I have expected processing times for each task at each server. Before starting a task, a process starts where a state statistic registers the state processing time of the entity. I also put list state to verify the schedule utilization. I have verified visually and the state value for processing time is correct for every station while the simulation is running. What I have observed is that the state statistic average processing time for the servers before the combiner is the expected value, however, all the other stations are 10 minutes off. The simio output has the right processing times for all the stations after the combiner but not for the two stations before the combiner. Moreover, the list state average time busy value are ok for all the stations after the combiner but again the station before the combiner, it gives the total number of minutes it was busy. Also, if i do the average of the state log observation for each station in excel afterwards, I get all the correct processing times. I am guessing it has something to do with the combiner, but I am lost. How can the processing time for table_MF be 10,48 when the processing time is a fixed 10 minutes in the facility window? Why is the list State MF and OP different from all the other list states? Thank you for your help!

Hello Vinicius, thank you for you help but I still having problems with the model. I can understand the logic behind of the SimBit "CombineMultipleEntityTypeOntoPallets" but I have some doubts. I change the model adding a combiner, I creted a intergrer model entity state to identify the quantity of containers, and I have a real state to identify the container but I dont know how change the batch logic of the container to each product. In the definitios tab you can see the batch logics. I hope you can help me Best regards. OptimoContenedores3.spfx

Hi, Usually what I do in cases that I want to check capacity before sending is create a "dummy" Resource. This way I seize its capacity before sending the entity forward. If it has no capacity for a given entity, the entity will just wait until it has capacity.

I'm trying to do something similar to do this where an order has 4 different routes or paths it can go (My model currently doesn't have paths). I created 3 separate sequence tables and created a process logic depending on if a certain workstation is already processing an order/entity, to go through this sequence. For some reason, whenever it gets to the "set row" step, there is a table reference error mentioning "no entries found" if though in the process step, I specify which row to start the new sequence. What is the reason behind this error?

Hello, please I need your help. I have a combiner in my model called Revisar_pedido, which fulfills its function without any problem until, at one point, an entity enters (Pedido_PU.597) and gets stuck inside it and I can't understand why it doesn't come out. I already checked the functions, processes and states and nothing seems wrong. I attach my model for better understanding. Beforehand thank you very much. 06.11.spfx

Hi there, I'm very much a novice, but currently leveraging the logic in VisitAllServersInAnyOrder simbit to ensure an entity visits an entity is never reworked more than once. I've updated the model entity with required state variables and created a "MyServer" to create the "HasEntityVisited" etc etc. I'm using the "Candidate.MyServer.HasEntityVisited==False" logic for the selection condition in the output node routing logic. However, whenever I run the model I get the error message "Referenced definition type "MyServer" does not match executing type "BasicNode". I've gone over and over the various elements and compared to the working simbit, but can't identify the issue. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Garrett

How can I model where the robot always pick 2 parts and waits until 2 parts are available at output buffer of the server. (Robot is available in extras library). i have multiple servers in the model.

Perhaps its a little late, but attached is a possible solution to your problem. This started out pretty simple. The problem was how to specify which server is serviced by which resource. One way to do that is a table. But since its changing over time I chose to use a time-indexed table, that is a table that knows about time and returns different data at different times. In this case, each row corresponds to 12 hours and each column specifies the resource needed by the respective server. As they say, "the devil is in the detail" and in this case the "devil" is that the specified resource may change between seize and release (e.g., seize at 11:59, release at 12:05). Simio doesn't like that and all the easy options re-evaluate the resource expression on release and so may try to release the wrong resource. One option would have been to create a custom server, but that seems to be overkill. Here is a somewhat simpler approach: 1) Add an entity state named MyResource and assign it at the last possible moment before use. This value will be used only for release. The assigned value is drawn from the table using an expression like Table1.S1Resource.TimeIndexedValue.Object. Note that the .timeindexedvalue indicates to get the value associated with the current time. And the .object at the end is used to tell Simio to return that value as an object not a number. 2) Use Secondary Resources - Other Resource Seizes to seize the name specified in the table using the same expression above Table1.S1Resource.TimeIndexedValue.Object. 3) Use Secondary Resources - Other Resource Releases to release the resource saved in MyResource. TimeBasedWorkerSelection.spfx

Hi! can you help me please? In my model I have a server that I want to function as storage, this server is linked to a combiner which will combine the member entities that leave the server with a parent entity that will arrive at it from another node. Each member entity has a state with a unique number linking it to a parent entity (there may be more than one member entity with the same state number). How can I extract from the server only the member entities whose state is equal to the state of the parent entity that arrives at the parentinput of the combiner? Thank you so much! 18.10.spfx