SIMPROCESS Advanced Feature

Expressions

The ability to create and set attributes is a powerful simulation feature when used in conjunction with SIMPROCESS Expressions. Expressions are user-written statements that SIMPROCESS executes during a simulation run. When you define an Expression, you select the point at which you want the Expression to be evaluated; for example, at the beginning of the simulation, or at the moment an Entity (e.g., a customer order) is received by an Activity (e.g., order distribution). In the case of the model where releasing of shipments depends on the total weight of orders such as appliances, you could do the following:

1. Define an Attribute called applianceWeight and set its value whenever an applianceorder Entity is generated by SIMPROCESS. You determine what value to assign applianceWeight by checking the name of the Entity type (e.g., dishwasher-order, television-order). This information is available from a system Attribute, Name.
2. When an Entity is received at the Batch Activity, add the Entity's applianceWeight value to the total weight of all orders waiting to be shipped (another User Attribute). Then check the total weight, and if it exceeds a certain value, do something to cause the Batch Activity to release a shipment. One way to force a shipment to be released is to change the batch size to a value equal to the current number of Entities in the Batch Activity. These values are available in System Attributes.

Dynamic Labels - There are two types of background text in SIMPROCESS: static text and dynamic labels. Static text is used for annotating the model layout and does not change during simulation. Dynamic labels update during simulation and are used to display information about changing properties of model elements. One way to update dynamic labels is through an UpdateDynamicLabel method in the expression builder.