28. May 2021

INOSIM Software Development Newsflash, 2nd Quarter, 2021

New Features coming to the INOSIM Packaged Goods Recipe Modules

The upcoming release of INOSIM 13 will be accompanied by an update to the packaged goods recipe modules. Apart from some changes, mostly to the naming conventions, bugfixes and optimizations, there will be three new features making its appearance.

Count Property for Recipe Modules

A highly requested feature in the form of the Count property is added as a parameter to the PullSource, Fill, and Discharge recipe modules. What does it do? Taking PullSource as an example, using the Count property it is now possible to pull a variable amount of movable units (MUs) into the simulation with a single PullSource operation. Before it was necessary to perform the operation for every single MU or use multiple PullSource modules. Likewise, you can now Fill or Discharge an X amount of MU’s in one fell swoop. So the Count Property lets you define how many MUs a recipe module should process at once.

New ProcessMU Recipe Module

You will also find a new recipe module, called ProcessMU. This module’s task is to take a MU and simply reserve it for a given amount of time, so no other recipe modules can easily use it for their own purposes. The module was added due to the demand for a way to more easily and explicitly simulate processes that don’t alter the MU but simply take up time, e.g., the time a MU spends on a conveyor belt.

Parameter template for ProcessMU:

Sub Set_Attributes_MU_ProcessMU(mi As OrderModuleInstance, rmi As RecipeModuleInstance)
mi.Attributes("Duration") = d 'double, s, >=0

mi.Attributes("Strategy") = s '"FiFo" or "LiFo", optional, default = FiFo
mi.Attributes("SkipReserved") = b 'bool, optional, default = true

mi.Attributes("ID") = l 'long, optional

mi.Attributes("Count") = l 'long, optional, default = 1

'The MU has to be in the unit. It does not wait for the MU.
'If no MU_ID is specified, the simulation takes the MU according to the strategy
End Sub

SkipReserved Property

Last but not least, the update sees the addition of the SkipReserved-Property to almost all recipe modules that goes along with a change to the default behavior with regard to how the recipe modules behave when they search and find a MU that is already reserved by another recipe module. Before, the recipe module would display an error stating that the found MU was just that, already reserved by module XY. Now, the default behavior is to simply skip already reserved MUs while searching for a suitable MU to process. And if the former behavior is still desired, thanks to the SkipReserved Property, the skipping can simply be disabled individually.

More Changes and Fixes

Regarding the other changes, fixes and optimizations, these will be described in more detail in the Release Notes once the updated packaged goods modules are made available.

Do you have any questions or would like to know more about this topic? Please contact us.

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