I’m currently building a layout of a production-line with a lot of manual processes. Some of the processes are extending normal work hours (where machines are handling the product), but during the day a lot of manual processes are made. I want to get a good estimation of the utilization of the workers and thereby getting an overview of, if the quantity of personnel is adequate or if they are too busy. My challenge is in the breaks/off-hours, where I can set the states of the human resources as working or idle, which does not leave me with a complete utilization estimation because it also accounts for the break and off-time. I’m interested in only the time the human resources are on shift. I have attached the PM-code that makes the human resources take brakes and start their shift in a defined schedule but I need to somehow pause the statistics of the specific resources when they are on break or off shift. To make it more complex I have 2 overlapping shifts, both 8 hours but 2 hours apart. My plan would be to change the capacity (recommended by VC support) of the resources when they are on break/off shift by sending a signal from the processes (process components) that control the break/off-shift shown in the attached screenshot, and then trigger the OnSignal in the human resources. The only thing now is that I’m, to my knowledge, not able to reserve specific resources to specific processes, or am I?
The reason that I want it to be specific resources is that I then will get the most accurate indication of utilization because of the 2 shifts. Shift 1 starts → capacity 1 for human resource #1 and statistics are recording. Shift 2 starts → capacity 1 for human resource #2 and statistics are recording. Shift 1 ends → capacity 0 for human resource #1 and statistics are paused etc.
You could try using Missions. In the Missions you can choose if they should apply to any resource or to one or several specific resources of the connected Transport Controller.
My challenge with using a mission controller is that I want to see how the day of an operator looks like, if he/she are tending the system as is. The layout is a model of a very complex process where it would take me days to figure out an optimal mission schedule and task schedule for the shifts, if I do it in the normal flow mode I can let the system settle, and get the schedule in 10 minutes if the simulation is sped up. Nonetheless, there must be some logic behind that mission controller and how it reserves resources that I can use. Thank you.
I have also been trying to apply shifts and time-off in my simulations.
I have been using Power management and the Available Boolean variable on the Resource itself to control it.
1.- The shift management is very specific and assigned to each resource individually according with the time. The Resource Controller will have all of the resources connected and a separate process will switch availability based on a timer or signal. I have attached below an example of one of my simulations.
2.- Another functionality that I discover is that you can use the power management to simulate break/off time based on the work done,. Like the time off some workers need during summer or in hot/cold environment where there are constant short intervals of break time.
You could assign a power value so that every 50 minutes of work, the resource goes to charge for 15 min to take a brake in an air-conditioner room and have a drink.
Hi Gomez,
Thank you very much for the reply. It is definitely a very nice idea to use the power management to control the short breaks that happens throughout the day. I ended up making a separate system for measuring the utilization for the human resources in the layout, but are still using the process modelling logic that I attached a screenshot of.
Because I could never know which resources went to which break/off-process I made a sensor that will detect which resource is at what break/off process. This sensor will then register the human at the process, turn off/pause the utilization calculation for that specific person. The utilization is calculated in a “global controller“ where I have the utilization of each specific resource in a collection of lists. The script will see if the utilization calculation is turned on or off for the reosurces (done by the sensor) and the calculation is done based on that. The calculation is then; if the person is on break/off the utilization list of the resource will not be appended with any new values until the resource moves away from the break/off area after which the lists are appended with the interval utilization values from the resources.
