Equipment assignment logic: Assign a piece of equipment to a
specific operation only if certain process criteria are satisfied.The most important step in the execution of a task is allocating a piece of equipment to perform that task. Once equipment is allocated, the subtasks are executed as defined in the recipe. The material and resource requirements specified in the recipe become the necessary conditions for the onset of a subtask. BATCHES provides a variety of options to arbitrating requests for allocation of equipment, material and resources.
Also, to synchronize operations you can send a signal from one subtask to trigger another subtask. These signals can be triggered by a state event.
Exception handling is an essential function of batch manufacturing. From the simulation standpoint, the important events that have a need for exception handling are: unavailability of raw materials, resources, or equipment when needed. BATCHES provides several ways to handle exceptions. In its simplest form, the subtask execution is delayed until are the necessary conditions are satisfied, and the waiting times are reported at the end of the simulation. Based on the cause for various delays, you can try corrective actions and evaluate their impact on the process performance. Alternatively, you can branch to a different sequence of subtasks if the conditions are not satisfied.
Products in a family follow a fixed sequence of operations but differ in details such as cycle times, batch sizes, flowrates etc. A recipe template represents a product family and provides spreadsheet input for parameters that are unique to each product in the family. This facilitates simulation of large processes without compromising the detailed recipe specifications.
You can control of the production based on the in-process inventory of desired products. Coupled with the ability to specify demand (amount and due dates) on each product, the simulator determines the feasibility of satisfying demand.
The open architecture of BATCHES allows you to incorporate user-written code to perform very specialized logic and computations. Some examples of user written code are:
Equipment assignment logic: Assign a piece of equipment to a
specific operation only if certain process criteria are satisfied.
Calculation of Parameter Values: Calculate a parameter value, for
example, product yield or subtask duration based on the number of batches
completed in a piece of equipment
Operation logic: Trigger certain actions such as scheduling
campaigns based on process status.
Physical Properties: BATCHES can be used with Activity++,
a state-of-the-art physical properties estimation package. Also, it can be
interfaced to an in-house physical properties package.
Process Dynamics Models: You can add your own process
dynamics models to the library.