We will now assign Arrival Profiles to the Order object that we created earlier. Arrival Profiles are assigned through the object definition, in the Sim Arrival Profiles tab.
1 Open the definition of the IDEF3 Object called Order (within the Explorer, select the IDEF3 Object definition called Order and double-click it, or right-click it and choose Open).
2 Select the Sim Arrival Profile tab.
3 Under Arrival Profiles, click the Choices button in the lower right-hand corner of the dialog. The Select and Drag dialog gives you a list of the Object Arrival Profiles that we created previously.
4 Select and drag the Arrival Profiles Morning Orders, Lunchtime Orders, Afternoon Orders, and Evening and Before Morning Orders into the Arrival Profiles list box. (Items are selected and dragged into the list box by selecting them, holding down your left mouse button, dragging the items into the top of the list, and then releasing them so that they are added to the list.)
5 Make sure that the Arrival Profiles are in the same chronological order, top to bottom, as that listed above. If not, select a profile as appropriate, and then use the small black up or down arrows underneath the Remove button in the dialog to adjust the positioning in the list.
6 Press OK to close the Orders Definition dialog.
You have specified Arrival Profiles for orders throughout a 24-hour day. When the Process Flow diagram is simulated, the order’s Arrival Profiles will be run through as listed, and then the whole set is repeated continuously, simulating continuous 24-hour days.
Note If you feel that orders arrive at a different rate on weekends, you would need to model this differently, by setting up a group for the week as we did earlier for Shift profiles. But we will not do that in this tutorial. We will assume orders arrive at a constant rate for every day throughout the week.
Usage notes
The order of the Arrival Profiles is important – the simulator executes the first Arrival Profile first, the second one second, and so on. You can adjust the positioning of any of the Arrival Profiles in the list by highlighting the profile and selecting the small up and down arrows underneath the Remove button in the dialog.
You can also change the definition of any of the Arrival Profiles in this dialog (above) by selecting the required Arrival Profile, and then clicking on the Define button. You can also create a new Arrival Profile by typing in an Arrival Profile name, clicking on the Add button, and then selecting the Define button.
