Arena Newsletter and Blog

Sometimes, a high speed packaging line must handle products that need to be stabilized during movement because of their size, shape, or spill potential. When this situation occurs, a common solution is to place the product into a puck, or carrier, during conveyance through the line operations. However, this can present a challenge to the modeler in exactly how to represent the introduction of empty pucks to the line, marrying the product with the puck, and de-pucking the product when complete. The following example discusses how to use pucks in a 1:1 relationship to product on a line.

In this month’s case study, one of the chief goals of the simulation model was to test several potential operational modifications. When there are several changes to test, the questions arise:

Arena allows you to define conveyor operation as a fixed path for material movement with pre-defined entry and exit points using the modules on the Advanced Transfer panel. Each entity to be conveyed must wait for sufficient space on the conveyor in order to gain entry and start transferring. When the entity reaches the end of the conveyor, the conveyor is disengaged until the entity is removed from the conveyor or conveyed to another station.

Arena is innovating simulation of high speed systems.  We’re solving bigger problems, faster, and more accurately to help our customers remain competitive in their fast paced business.

In Discrete Event Simulation one issue we must resolve is the number of concurrent entities in the model. If that number gets “large” then model run speed can be impacted. In the typical systems that we model this usually does not become an issue either because we will not have a large concurrent number or because our computers are really fast.