Can a work item trigger a new work item to enter the simulation?

MRowl

Hello, I am trying to simulate a process where once a work item finishes (leaves the simulation) it triggers a new work item to enter (either after a delay or immediately before leaving). Say at the end of a data handling process, the completion of that work spawns a "checkup" work item for tomorrow that goes into the analyst's workload to be balanced with/prioritized against other tasks.
Many thanks,
Mike

Candy92

Hey, I can think of different ways to achieve that depending on the exact situation you are modeling:
1.) If there is only ever one work item at a time in the simulation, you can create a pre-filled queue with Start Up on the Queue > Properties and then group all queues and activities in the simulation and set the overall group limit = 1. That way, once a work items leaves the group, the next work item enters as there is space again.

2.) You can start with a single work item at the start of the simulation, e.g., Start Point > Additional > First Work Item at Start and then simply batch out two fixed = 2 at the last activity whereas one of the batched out items goes to the End Point, the other one gets routed to the first queue in your process and thereby starting a new simulation.

3.) If you are familiar with Visual Logic you can, say On Exit of the last Activity or Queue, use a command like, "Copy current work item" and copy it to the front of the process. Similar to 2.), one work item goes to the End Point and the other one goes to the front of the simulation.

MRowl

Thanks Candy, sadly 1 won't work since there are multiple work items flying around. I was thinking of doing something like what you have stated in 3 but I have a few follow up questions if you don't mind. Does this copy get it's own unique ID? I am setting unique IDs and tracking them and I don't want to overwrite lines in my output file with the copy instead of the original. If not is there a way to call for a unique number to assign in the visual logic (like the unique tick box in the actions window)?

jholtman

You just "insert a workitem" with VL to a queue to create a new workitem and you also have the ability to set the labels (if you are using them) to whatever values you want. This also allows the ability to add '0 to n' workitems depending on what you want to do.