simulation - How to create orders for picking process at warehouse operations using Anylogic

Question

During the creation of a generalized warehouse model, I ran into a problem when trying to create an order event that can be used by order pickers to retrieve the products from the storages racks. Currently, I am using a source block which creates "orders" of a single type of pallet (1 to 5). The pickers each travel to pick up a pallet from the rack and transports them to the next location.

Question: How can I create an order consisting out of several pallets consisting of different types.
Question: How can I use a single picker (resource) to pick multiple pallets in a single run through the warehouse before transporting all the pallets to the next location (process).

Kind regards, Stefan

Answer 1

Question 1

normally i would create a class for the higher level order (say Pickwave class). And when instantiating it you need to save a list of actual picking orders(pallets) into it (say collection of type ArrayList<Order>).

And to process your pickwave you can use a loop which will steer your resource/transporter/picker to the next Order location until all orders are picked. If everything is picked you exit your loop and move to your next location

Question 2

you don't really pick the orders as you would normally pick them using RackPick block in 1-to-1 scenario. But as you have a refence to all your orders inside you pickwave object you can still control their location/animation programmatically.