Explore the use of Lists in a process flow

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A FlexSim List is a shared asset that helps to organize and manage collections of entities within your process flow.

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You can use Lists to sync tokens or objects, organize groups of objects, track custom statistics,

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or use search concepts like filtering and prioritization for making choices within your model.

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Using the Push To List and Pull From List activities, the contents of a List can be dynamically updated during a simulation run.

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First, it is important to understand how a List functions.

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Here, a ProcessFlow is open with some general information about Lists and a List example.

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Open the Quick Library to see that Lists and List activities can be accessed within Shared Assets.

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In the example shown, the Source on the left generates tokens to push to the List, followed by a Delay and a Sink activity.

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On the right, a Source generates tokens that pull from the List–again, followed by a Delay and a Sink activity.

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For Lists, a value is anything that is pushed onto the List—this could be a token, flow item, task executer, task sequence and more.

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A puller is anything that pulls the values from the List.

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If the puller cannot pull a specific value, then it becomes a back order.

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Click the List, and then, in Quick Properties, select View Entries.

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The simulation is Reset and Run, and then paused, so you can see that a token is created on the left and pushed to the List.

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In the View Entries dialog, id:1 now appears as a Value on the List.

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Click the token, and in Properties, you can see that the token Name is id:1.

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Run the simulation again, and a token appears on the right that now pulls from the List.

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When the simulation is paused, notice that id:1 no longer appears as a Value on the List, since it was pulled successfully.

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Open the Pull from List Quick Properties, where this activity is set up to assign a label to the token when it is pulled.

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Click the puller token, now in the Delay activity, and in Properties,

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notice that this token—id:2—is assigned a label of the token it pulled—in this case, id:1.

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Similarly, the pulled token—id:1—is assigned a label of the puller token, or id:2.

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Open the Push to List Quick Properties to see that this activity is set up to assign a label of token.puller.

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To view the back orders associated with the List, open the List Quick Properties and click View Back Orders.

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The simulation is Reset and Run at an accelerated speed and then paused.

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In the Back Orders dialog, you can see that several tokens tried to pull from the List unsuccessfully, creating backorders.

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Open the List Quick Properties again, and this time, select View this activity’s Statistics to see valuable statistics,

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including the Input, Output, Content, and Staytime captured for the list and back orders.

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Now you understand how a List functions, as well as how to view List entries, back orders, and List statistics.