A production schedule in which a sequence of different items are repeatedly produced.
Suggested Technique
1. Create an arrival from each entity type to the starting activity. Make sure you create the arrivals in the order they occur.
2. On the arrival connections’ properties sheet, select Periodic from the Type pull-down box.
3. Enter the quantity for each entity arrival (the quantity to be produced).
4. Each Repeat every field should have the same time in order to maintain a consistent arrival sequence for each of the entity types being processed.
5. In the First time fields, enter the amount of time each arrival will be delayed from the simulation start time.
Example: An assembly line is scheduled to produce three treadmill models but can only produce one specific model at a time. The production manager wants the assembly line to repeatedly produce 20 of Model_A, 17 of Model_B, and 28 of Model_C, in that order. The theoretical or minimum time to produce a treadmill is every 10 minutes.
TO DO: Define the Periodic arrivals as shown above. In the arrivals’ properties dialog, enter the following information:
To stop the time spent waiting to begin processing from being added to the entity cycle time statistics, enter CycleStart = Clock() in the Action logic of the first activity.