The transporter and operator task sequence...

[syseo]

I have a question during looking the Model 2 of Tutorial...
The model is using two operators in order to transport the flowitem from Queue to three processors and during setup the processors.

When one operator transport the flow item a processor and when the processor need the setup operator, the other postion operator moves to the processor not using the nearest operator. Why?

I want to control the operator transporting to a processor and to setup the processor by himself without calling other operator.

How can I control it?

Regards.

[Cliff King]

The problem has to do with the fact that the operator who transports the flowitem is released as soon as it unloads the flowitem at the processor, then the processor determines that it needs to utilize an operator for the setup time, so it generates a tasksequence and sends it to the dispatcher. The dispatcher then looks through its output ports for the first available operator which is not always the one who transported the flowitem over. One solution would be to use the "Shortest Distance" option for the "Pass To" field of the dispatcher object. I've attached an example that does this, but I needed to use two dispatchers because I wanted the "Shortest Distance" rule for the travel task dispatched by the queue to only consider available objects, and I wanted the "Shortest Distance" rule for the setup utilize task dispatched by the processor to consider all objects whether they're available or not. This solution is probably going to have problems in some scenarios, so I really think you would be better off creating a custom task sequence dispatched by the queue that gives a single operator the tasks of transporting and being utilized for the setup time. The following link discusses how to do this and
even includes a sample model by Brenton: http://www.flexsim.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63