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Hello, I'm very new to SIMIO and apologize if this question is too elementary. I've been trying to figure out how to run the simulation from a defined list of entities. Most of the SIMBITS and examples I have seen use a random "product mix" or other means to produce entities. Is there a way to simply run say, 40 defined mixed entities from the data table. I'd like to run several different entities from the data table, all with different sequences and processing times. Similar to the SIMBIT EntityFollowsSequenceWithTable but with a defined amount of PartA,PartB,and PartC entities. Thank you for the help!

If you mean that an entity should not advance to the next location unless it is available: Try using Node Lists when routing entities to the next location. Lists automatically block the entity from moving forward if the destination server is not available. 1. Create a node list in Definitions>Lists 2. Set the input and output buffers to 0 on your servers 3. On the output nodes, set Entity destination type to "Select From List" and choose the node list. If you mean you have a group entities that are processing at different servers and none in that group can advance until all are processed: Use a Wait step and event. After each entity finishes, trigger the wait step to wait for an event. After the last entity finishes, fire the Event. You will probably also use a Decide step to separate the non-last entities (wait for event) from the last entity (fire event).

Hi to all! I am currently working on a project in which it would be desirable to show a container yard with stacked container entities, limited up to 5 containers per column of stacked entities. I have worked with queues associated to both servers and storage/station items, and found that it is possible to emulate what I want to do, but that the height of every single container must be defined by a hand-drawing process, which is a time-consuming task. Is there a way to create a container yard and to define it's properties? I have read in the forums some answers to similar problems stating that "a storage element will suffice", but it seems to me that I am failing to see how to manifest physically in the model the container yard with the restrictions mentioned above (at most I have been able to show the contents of the storage/station element on a queue line). Any hints, tips, or comments would be deeply appreciated. Cheers!

Dear all, I am currently simulating a 3D printing facility in the frame of my Bachelorthesis and I have a specific problem which I cannot solve by myself. I have four Entity types with different lead times which are specified in a datatable as shown in one of the SimBit solutions. However, I need to batch the entities before they arrive in the workstation to simulate that several parts are processed within one 3D printing build job. The problem is that the workstation only calculates the leadtime of the parent entity and not of each individual member. Instead of calculating: 5hr + 4hr + 3hr + 2hr= 14hr for a batch of four entities, the machine only calculates 5hrs. Is there any solution with a search step to explain the workstation that it should define the batch members and then to add the lead time for each of them according to my datatable and to use the sum as processing time? I am really thankful for any help you can provide, so thank you very much in advance! Greetings from Hamburg, Armin R.

Hello Judy, Thanks for your modifications, I edited the model with these comments. I have some concerns, first, by applying Standard Dispatching Rule, Is it minimise the processing time of task, and I do not know how to run the simulation by using a new network with vehicles. Best regards Ahmed Elkherbawy

What you can do is within the Worker object's 'Evaluating Seize Request' add-on process, create a process. This process will then be called each time the worker is deciding whether to take on the entity seize request being made (if not, it will try again next time worker becomes available). Add the following steps to the process: Add a Decide step with Expression 'Entity.Location.Parent == Server2 && (Server1.InputBuffer.Contents > 0) ' - the Entity.Location.Parent will determine if the requesting entity is at Server2 and if so, if the Server1.InputBuffer has anyone in it - and if so, that means there are higher priority items to be worked on at the Server1. From the True exit of the Decide , add an Assign step to assign the State variable 'Token.ReturnValue' to be the value of 'False' or '0'. This means that the entity request for the worker will be false (for this particular evaluation) - when the queue at Server1 resides, and the evaluation is again done, the token will exit the False exit of the Decide and the entity at Server2 will be able to seize the worker.

Hello Ahmed, You still have your vehicles set to Network only. But there aren't any paths/networks to follow at all for it. It can't travel from one place to the other without them. Therefore, distance traveled is 0. You could place two nodes at each end of the server and have your vehicles move back and forth between those in free space. You'd have to set your vehicles' initial travelmode to Freespace Only. Next, you have some issues with your logic. Entities are trying to seize the resources/vehicle. You have your tasks set to seize SomeProperty.HasValue. The .HasValue only checks to see if there is a value in the property. Which it does. But the check is more like a Boolean. 1 or 0. It is not a value or quantity. Then you have the number of units of capacity for each vehicle only set to 1 because work schedule. Which is fine. But even if you take the .HasValue off, you are trying to seize more units of capacity than one. Since your vehicles never have that capacity (remember ride capacity and resource capacity are different things) your order will never finish processing and will always be behind. I would worry about the logic of your model. I have modified your model to over simplify things. Which I recommend doing first. Then building upon that. Get an entity to travel from the start to finish before adding lots of other factors in. In the modified model (saved in10.165) , you can see that you have set a Target. The Scheduled finish date versus the actual finish date are tied together. As far as constraints, you will see that in the Planning tab, after running the Create Plan button, there is under the Tasks of Section1 where the Constraints are shown. See image. In this case, it's the resource arrival of a vehicle. I hope this information helps. Thank you, Judy Model 1 Modified.spfx

Hello Ahmed, First, you have your vehicle network only. And there aren't enough paths or links for it to travel on in the correct directions. I would set it to network if possible for now until you resolve this and you have some of your nodes with Outbound Travel Mode set to Network Only. But the vehicle is having the most issues with the fact that it is being required to be in two places at once and the processing of the entity at the servers will never complete. The first entity goes into the Unloading Server. You have it being moved as a secondary resource to the input node at the server in your task requirements. Then, you have the server itself requiring the AggregateTipperTruck to move to the output node as it is required. The resource capacity for the vehicle can be seized twice and successfully complete processing at the server. I hope this helps point you in the right direction. Judy

Hi All, I've got a simulation that creates entities based on a data table - premiumCustomers and regularCustomers. I've got a tally defined PremCustWaitTillService that tallies: Run.TimeNow - ModelEntity.TimeCreated for premiumCustomers. If the premiumCustomer waits longer than 5 minutes, I want to be able to tally these events such that at the end of the simulation I can see x discounts have been awarded to premiumCustomers in the results stats in a tally stat called CountDiscountsGiven. I might have a couple of issues that I am confused on here. In particular: Using an entity's wait time as a conditional statement for assignment in Processes. When the premiumCustomer enters the server (processing), I tally PremCustWaitTillService with Value: Run.TimeNow - ModelEntity.TimeCreated. I imagine a conditional that states something like If PremCustWaitTillService > 5 I updated a tallystat CountDiscountsGiven + 1 but I can't seem to get it to work - I don't see any entities changing color (as I've set them to if they wait longer than 5). I've attached my file because my terminology may be off - the sim runs but no CountDiscountsGiven values show up. SpeedeeCarRentalNew.spfx

1. If you look at the results in the pivot grid for your vehicle, you will see that the Resource State Time Offshift Busy is very high. This means your Vehicles are still processing (utilized) after they went offshift. Scheduled utilization is based on how long the Resource is utilized vs how long the Resource is scheduled to be onshift. By default, Resources finish processing their current entity before going offshift, during this in bewtween time it is a state called OffshiftBusy. You have to put additional logic if you want something different to occur. Look into the Interrupt or Suspend/Resume steps. 2. None of your Entities are Destroyed. There is no Sink object in the Pivot Grid because no entities ever enter it (usually it is shown in the pivot grid). If you look in Trace, you'll see that none of the Entities are ever sent to the Sink. The entities are routed using a Sequence Table, but the Sequence Table does not have a row for Input@Finished...The sequence restarts if it gets to the end of the sequence.

They are similar statistics except that the first statistic looks at the resource state as it changes over time ... successive "busy" states with no state change between them (e.g. there is no idle time) are considered to be a single busy state. For the second statistic each entity is recorded separately. For example, if you have a model that creates exactly 2 entities at time zero and has exactly one minute of processing time, then [Resource] > Resource State > TimeProcessing will have a single observation of 2 minutes and Processing > Holding Time > Time In Station will have two observations of 1 minute each.

What is the main difference between [Resource] > Resource State > TimeProcessing and Processing > Holding Time > Time In Station? I see both statistics for a single server.

If you set up the tasks within the Task Sequence to be of Process Type 'Process Name' where the processing logic/delay is specified within a specific process, you could then use the Interrupt step to interrupt the process (given that the Delay step within the process has the Interruptible property set to 'True'.

As my major is Railway Engineering, I am trying to simulate the construction process of a railway station. I mean the construction of railway tracks in the station, not the station buildings. For example: For simulating the construction process of a turnout, it needs three main things: machine, workforce, and material. I have used the turnout as a server, and I have used 3 entities coming from 3 resources to the server (the turnout). As the entities arrived the server, it starts processing and its symbol will be changed to green box. I have assigned a turnout symbol for the processing step instead of the green box, and I need to keep this symbol during the whole simulation process as it represents the constructed turnout.

The symbols correspond to the "Resource States" that are assigned (and used for statistics calculation) based on what the Server is actually doing. So, for example, when the entity has 'seized' the Server and is processing for the processing delay (or multiple processing tasks), the Server is in a 'Processing' state or Busy. When the entity leaves the Server, it is no longer processing (unless another entity has entered and in processing delay). Thus, the 9 resource states are also used for statistics calculation for the Server. You can change the symbol colors (or symbol itself) of those states by highlighting the Server, clicking on the Active Symbol button on the Symbols ribbon and selecting the appropriate symbol/value. If you can let us know more about what information you are trying to gather or why you wish to have the Server remain green, we can perhaps point you in the right direction.

Hi guys I am new user of SIMIO software, and I am facing some difficulties. Could anyone help me please? I have a server receiving entities from a source. By default, server has 10 types of symbols (starved 0, processing 1… Etc.) . My question: Is it possible to keep the server with the symbol of processing (which is usually green box) after finishing the process ?? Thank you

One approach is to put logic in the "Off Shift" add-on process logic that would check to see if the queue has contents, and if so, set the server capacity back to 1. The you would need to wait an hour (probably Execute another process) and reset capacity to 0. If the pivot table already contains what you want, then use the Export button to export to Execl. If not, call the ExcelWrite step from a process at the right time to write out all the information you need.

Hello, I would like to make a server disappear when I finish processing entities with it. Would there be a way I can do this ? Thank you, Flora

Hi farnaz, in fact, you should be checking your buffer at the beginning of the period 10-11. If all machines stop at 10, entities will stop flowing shortly after. Therefore you could check around 10:05 or somewhere around the beginning of the period. To do so, you can use a timer (Definitions>Elements>Timer) and set it to occur every 24h with an offset of 20h05m (10:05PM)). Then, have a process being triggered by that timer. In that process you would check if the input buffer was empty or not (Server.InputBuffer.Contents==0). You can do that using a Decide step. If the condition is false (there is something in the buffer) change the resource state + Capacity of the server so that it processes said entity. For it to work for another hour you could set another timer or use a paralell process with a delay of 55min. At the end of that time you would turn off the server again. Hope this helps (I haven't tested it to be sure it works)

Hello, I have a very large number of different products that must go through a workstation and each of them have different setup / processing / teardown times. My idea was to create a table and import the data from Excel containing the product name, ratio, and setup times etc. I got that part done, but now I'm stuck. It seems I would need to create en entity with the name of each product? There must be another way? Thanks in advance. Samuel

HELLO, before asking my question ı want to make some explanations about the model. 1- the model is source- server 1, server2 - sink. server1 and server2 has no connection. source connceted with this two servers and two servers linked to the sink. each server has different processing times. 2- server1 is required 5 minutes in every 10 hours while server2 is required 6 minutes in every 8 hours. server1 cannot give service during the maintenance and maintenance cannot start if there are customers in queue. 3- when either server finishe serving a customer, server takes the next customer from the server's queue, if any, and if server's queue is empty but the other is not, server takes the first customer from the other queue. My question is how to build this model? could you please help me???

I am trying to set the server processing times from a table, but it results in an error message. ServerData table: Column 1 = object instance pointing to server Column 2 = processing time Server Process Logic: Processing Time = ServerData.ProcessingTime

Hi, I have model with multiple vehicles and servers in parallel. I made a process for my vehicles to wait for all the entities they carry to process before exiting. Now I would like to create a process for my vehicles to choose a server that is free (or has less number of entity processing). I have already tried to do so by selecting on the previous output node the entity destination to NodeList, and then Smallest value --> Candidate.Node.AssociatedStationLoad, but then my vehicle make a U-turn instead of dropping all entities at the same server. For my vehicle process I tried to put first a Search step : Collection type : NodeList Search Type : foward SearchCandidate.Server.Capacity.Allocated==0 Save Index found : not sure what to use ? Then I would like to set the next destination node of my vehicle to the one found by the search step, but I havn't found how to do it. Can someone be of any help ? Thanks in advance !

There are a number of functions for conveyors/paths that can be used to determine the utilization of the conveyor - they are listed in the Help under Functions, States and Events for Link Objects. If you would like specifically the length of entities on a particular conveyor, you can add a real State variable (Definitions/States) that you would increase when an entity enters the conveyor and decrease when the entity leaves the conveyor (let's say LengthEntitiesOnConveyor) - if all entities were the same size, you could also simply use the ConveyorName.NumberTravelers functions (with some default size). To determine the length of entities on the conveyor, click on the conveyor object, and within the 'Entered' add-on process, add a process that simply uses an Assign step to assign LengthEntitiesOnConveyor (or whatever your new state variable is) to be 'LengthEntitiesOnConveyor + ModelEntity.Size.Length'. Then, within the Reached End add-on process, add a process that uses an Assign step to assign LengthEntitiesOnConveyor to be 'LengthEntitiesOnConveyor - ModelEntity.Size.Length'. There are also ways to search the entities that are currently on the conveyor, using the ConveyorName.Contents queue if you want other specific information about entities on the conveyor.

I'd consider using a Materials (element) approach. See SimBit ScheduledMaterialArrivals for providing your initial garden contents. See SimBit WorkStationWithMaterialConsumptionAndReplenish for how to reorder (regrow) your garden.