At SIMUL8 Corporation we have a huge number of users modeling conveyor based systems with
a particularly large number of users in manufacturing areas such as automotive and food and drink.
Conveyors have always been in SIMUL8, real quick and easy to use. For the 2016 release
we’ve taken on board lots of great feedback from our users on how to add a new dimension
of flexibility and functionality for conveyors in the software.
So with SIMUL8 2016 we’ve added new parameters to the conveyor object. These parameters will
allow you to quickly turn these conveyors into 'Power & Free' conveyors. You will visibly
see these on screen, as hooks will appear on the conveyor. You also get new parameters
such as the distance between work items on the conveyor and the attachment points – so
where the work items are travelling on these hooks. This adds a new level of realism to
your simulations if you have these sorts of systems in your industry.
We’ve also added some new options to conveyors such as selecting and moving them. So, now
it’s even easier to build up your simulations. And a new snap to angle feature for your conveyors
so if your overlaying conveyors on something like a CAD drawing or a plant layout you can
now do that and make something that is familiar and recognisable to stakeholders.
So, we are really excited about these features and we’re looking forward to showing you the new 2016 conveyors.
Working closely with our users, extra functionality has been created to model flexible manufacturing systems.
Additional functionality now includes conveyors with fixtures, fixed carriages and
conveyor dogs. Together this makes it easier to model the recirculation of parts, balance
the lines and provide maximum material flow.
Let’s set up a new 'Power and Free' type conveyor.
We start in the normal way by accessing the “Advanced Building Blocks” component palette.
We select a conveyor and then place the location for the end of the conveyor onscreen using
our cursor. Then we drag on the placing handle to position the start of the conveyor.
Next we link the conveyor to the adjacent objects to allow items to flow.
Now, if we select the new conveyor we can set the speed in the 'Properties' tab of the ribbon.
On the ‘Additional’ tab we find the new options for setting a ‘Fixed Pitch’ or ‘Power and Free' Conveyor.
Clicking this tick box will activate this mode and we can
then set the distance between dogs by altering the ‘Dog Pitch’ value.
Let’s see how the simulation looks if we allow 8 feet between the dogs.
This leaves a good amount of space between items and provides enough dogs to maintain the current flow rate.
If we change the ‘Dog Pitch’ to a higher value, say 20 feet,
we can see that the dogs become more spaced out
and we will therefore be picking up incoming items less often.
When we run in this mode we can see that this is causing bottlenecking to occur.
If we now do the opposite and decrease the ‘Dog Pitch’ to a lower value like 2 feet,
we should see that more dogs are represented and that the gap between the dogs is much smaller.
However, now when we run the simulation the items are not using every available dog.
The simulation is taking account of the length or footprint of each individual work item.
Therefore a new item can only enter the conveyor when there is sufficient space for it to enter
and when a corresponding dog appears.
Here we can change the item length using a controlled label action like this.
By setting a smaller length we can see that the capacity of the conveyor increases
and more dogs are being used.
Now, by resetting to the original 'Dog Pitch' value of 8 feet, this forces the work items
to spread out again across the conveyor.
Modeling these interactions between individual item lengths and the spacing between dogs
opens up a range of exciting options and greater flexibility and accuracy in the simulation
of different conveyor systems.