I'm trying to create a packaging cell for 5 items into 1 package; the 5 items are picked up from a resource (worker) and placed into a packaging machine which generate the package; a conveyor moves the packages from the machine to a buffer and every once in a while (say every 20 packages) the worker stops picking the items and goes to the buffer the put all the packages in a box, ideally ready to be shipped. Once the worker has completed the box he has to go back to his pick&place task.
Now, my issues are:
When the worker stops picking the items from the rackSystem and goes to the buffer, the source blocks have to stop generating agents, otherwise the simulation will stop saying that there are no available cells in the rack;
When the worker gets back to his picking task the source blocks have to start generating agents again.
With the hold blocks in the picture I managed to stop the source blocks when the worker stops picking from the rack, anyway I could not make the process start again when the box is complete. How can i do this?
Everything works fine except from the fact that once the worker returns to the picking location and take the last 5 items from the rack, no more agents are allowed to enter the rack.
Actually from this setup, I think you should do this:
Let your sources create agents continuously. In reality (I suppose) things also do not stop coming in just because the worker is doing something else.
Gather all agents in an infinite queue, as you do
remove the hold blocks
instead, make your RackStore and RackPick objects utilize the worker resource pool (tick the box as below and select your resource pool)
You may need to play with the "customize resource choice" selection as well to ensure that your worker only tries to store items when the RackSystem has a space, though, something like below:
Related
Iam trying to build a model represented as shown but the main problem is how to put my hands on transporters and can do sequence logic on them while been loaded and unloaded along the path among my flowchart sequence.assign queue and delay blocks to my transporter type.
error while doing that.
First, i wanted to make a queue and delay before reaching loading point but when i ran the model i had an error as i tried to cast the delay and the queue to my transporter agent (forklift) and not the material item type(agent) , and when i tried to cast it to my agent (material item type) it didn't respond or see the delay or the queue and the transporter didn't stop.
After loading i want to make a second stop (delay) and queue of transporters out side it but , the model only see the delay and (loaded transporters) ran through the queue and stop in the delay block and i want to investigate the queue but the transports didn't stop in it.
Not quite clear what you need but it sounds like you want to explore preparation flow charts as part of Seize and Release actions, see https://anylogic.help/library-reference-guides/process-modeling-library/resourcetaskstart.html.
With these, you can make your resources (forklifts) follow some flow chart logic before they are actually being seized by your agents. This also works with transporters afaik
I used seize-move-release in order to move the agent with the resource. shown in the figure below.
Problem
Now the only problem is, how agents will wait in the queue (capacity 2) for there turn to go to the Delay section using resource. Explanation is in the image below.
What i am trying to achieve:
I mean agents wait in the queue (capacity 2). Once the delay(machine) gets empty, only then resource transfer the agent from the queue to the delay.
Note:
I try to use service because Service block have queue too but I need the queue before the resource pool.
I hope I explain my problem well let me know if I miss some thing.
I used Wait Block for the agents to Wait but when wait capacity equals to 2 . Agents stop moving forward.
Use a "Wait" object ahead of moveTo.
Whenever the delay capacity decreases to zero ("on exit" code box of delay you can check it using delay.size()==0?), you can tell an agent in the "Wait" object to advance now, using wait.free(agentToFree).
If you want to free the oldest agent, use wait.free(wait.get(wait.size()-1))
In Any Logic i have batched segments to rings (both are agents) if i want to move rings using move by crane it is giving error:
As i am pretty new to this software i have very less idea how the agents are seized and assigned to any block.
Can anyone please tell me how to sort this issue i tried to use restrict block OR delay before move by crane but still it did not work. Please find details here
Thank you in advance.
The error you're getting has to do with the space of the agents (both the crane's space and the destination agent's space).
Specifically, in order for the crane to pick up the agent and the move it, they both have to be in the same space.
To ensure that they're both in the same space, try adding code "On Exit" of the queue right before the moveByCrane block.
It should look something like this:
On exit queue:
agent.setSpace(overheadCrane.getSpace());
Did you define the location of the batch? If not, this might be the cause of the error.
AnyLogic creates a new agent when you use the batch flowchart block. Unless explicitly specified, this agent will not belong to any space. That's why you need to define the location of the batch first as seen here:
Batch location
Another thing that I've noticed is that you entered node1 as destination of the MoveByCrane block. Based on your attached screenshot, you want the crane to move the agent from node1 to node2. In this case, you should enter node2 as destination of the MoveByCrane block instead.
Agent Comparison/ Priority for queue
I'm building a model in Anylogic I have a question about visualization.
I have a model that looks like this: Source -> delay -> queue (with preemption option that goes into a delay2) -> seize -> delay3 -> release -> sink.
What I would like to do is make the agents enter the queue but visually keep moving along a circled path while waiting. In my model, I put the queue to a capacity of 1 and then added a preemption option which goes into a delay where the agents move along a circled path. I am able to make them take a lap along the path this way, but since the capacity of the queue can't be less than 1 there is always 1 agent standing still (not going in the preemption option). I would like for all of them to keep moving on the circled path while in the queue. How can I fix this?
Also, since the seize block has an embedded queue, and it starts where the queue before ends, there are actually two agents standing still at the same place.
I'm trying to emulate what QUEST does when a buffer is queried for a certain Part. In there if the part is not in the buffer the request is left pending and if a Part arrives to the buffer it's released to the machine requesting it. I have also seen this behavior in SimPy which is another DES engine.
I can't seem to find a simple way to do this in AL. The queue block has the following methods:
release(agent): Will return false and forget about the request if there's not an agent as the one specified
remove(agent): Will return null if there's no agent in the queue
So those methods won't do what I want...
It gets a little more complicated as the queue contains agents with parameters and I want to request a specific set of parameters (let's say the agents have a number parameter that can go from 1 to 3 and I'm only interested in agents in the queue if this parameter has the value 2).
Also there's a series of agents pulling this agents from the queue simultaneously and I'd like a priority to be set (let's say FIFO)
so there's a couple things that I've tried and have lead me nowhere:
Using a seize block instead of queue and adding the agents to the embedded queue in the seize block. -> I can't find the proper method to seize from the buffer in a different way from a buffer block (so I moved to option 2) but seize does have a promising customize resource choice that could help with the parameter down-selection
Using a seize block and storing the agents in a pool as resources. issues with dynamic creation of resources, seizing the appropriate one etc...
Creating a queue of requests that have returned null from a queue. This sounds like an overkill but I'll look into it
All of those appear to be a bit complex for such a simple thing in other softwares for simulation so I'm wondering if I'm missing something or if someone has come across this issue before
Suggestion 1: may it helps you to store the agents in the queue in a collection (or different collections, according to the parameter settings). Events: "on enter" and "on exit"
Suggestion 2: may the Wait - block helps you here?