Producing additional items when an in-process or finished goods storage has been depleted to a certain level. Useful for producing on demand based on the monitoring of an inventory level. Can also be used for modeling a Kanban system.
Suggested Technique
- Create an Ordered routing from an activity or storage that is to wait for an order signal before releasing more entities.
- Connect the storage or activity being monitored to the Ordered routing connection.
- Select the Order Signal and enter the Reorder level and the Order quantity in the properties dialog.
- Check Place order at start if you want an order to be placed at time zero of the simulation. (This is useful to initially get entities moving in the system.)
Example: An assembly line pulls assemblies from the Storage Bin . When the Storage Bin ’s quantity drops to 30, an order is placed for 100 more assemblies. Side_Line_A then produces the assemblies from parts in Inventory and routes them to the Storage Bin.
TO DO: Create the Order Signal connection and in the properties dialog enter 30 and 100 in the Reorder level and Order quantity fields as shown. Set the input queue of Assembly1 to zero.