Produce so many parts each hour until daily requirement is met?

[vmorr]

Having trouble trying to simulate/schedule a part painting process. In an 8 hour shift, trays of parts are pulled from storage to be painted until the hourly requirement is met/surpassed. Paint eventually stops pulling them completely for the day when the overall daily requirement is met. The idea is to capture how much waiting time within the 8 hours there is after the hourly/daily requirements have been met. This "free time" will be used to determine how much of other products can be thrown on the line and when to fill in the gaps during this shift.Attached is an example I'm working with.

The simulation starts with paint pulling 8 trays of parts every 24 seconds. Trays are continually pulled from each buffer (starting with A) until at least the hourly part requirement is met. Once the hourly requirements are met, the simulation is to basically do nothing until a full hour is passed where the "Parts Painted (Hour)" total will be cleared. Parts will be pulled again at the start of the following hour and continue until the hourly or daily requirement is met, whichever first. If for example the daily requirement is met in the third hour, parts will no longer be pulled in the following hours. Once 24h has passed, the daily count ideally would reset and the process will start over.

I have the initial pull configured to where on start of the simulation, parts are pulled by paint and stop being pulled once the hourly requirement is met/surpassed. However I do not know how to incorporate time properly into my simulation so that after an hour passes, my pull method is executed again.

How can I go about this? Is this to be done through using methods and like observers or is there another tool I can use to perform this sort of task? Sorry if this seems confusing, let me know if any more info is required!

[Steffen_B · Accepted solution]

you could check two ways:

- if you moved your hourly amount --> create a call at the full hour (function
self.methCall(timeToFullHour) --> see help)
- if you need in each case less than one hour --> call the pull method every hour using a generator

[vmorr]

Thanks Steffen, after posting the question I went snooping around and basically came to your second solution but using a Trigger. In the attached example I disabled the Trigger and set up a Generator instead and it does the same thing.

When is it more appropriate to use a Trigger over a Generator?

[Steffen_B]

The trigger can also change values or can control the source, this cannot do the generator.