Factory Explorer^® Technical Alert #26
For All Users of Factory Explorer^® v2.6

Summary: Regardless of whether an Effective Date is specified on the Process, Tools, Operators, or Process Flow sheet, Factory Explorer® sorts all definitions for a given user-input (such as a tool, an operator, or a process step) by Effective Date. When multiple entries exist for the same Effective Date, Factory Explorer® selects the last definition specified by the user for use in the model analysis. A model validation warning will be generated when multiple definitions are specified for the same Effective Date in the next release of the software.

Details: The example below shows multiple definitions specified for step ãGenericProcessStep,ä each of which have an associated Effective Date. Notice that step ãGenericProcessStepä is both ACTIVE and INACTIVE for ãProduct1ä as of 10/01/99:

Once Factory Explorer® reads in the process flow above, the definitions associated with step ãGenericProcessStepä are sorted by increasing Effective Date. In the event that more that one definition is specified for the same Effective Date, Factory Explorer® stores the last set of information specified by the user (that is, the last row of inputs specified in the userâs model). Therefore, Factory Explorer¨ has the following information in memory for step ãGenericProcessStepä:

Therefore, step ãGenericProcessStepä is ACTIVE for ãProduct1ä as of 10/01/99, because this was the last row of inputs specified by the user. While this type of multiple definitions specification will not result in an error within Factory Explorer®, it could cause unexpected results in the modelâs output, specifically if step ãGenericProcessStepä was supposed to be INACTIVE for ãProduct1.ä Therefore, a model validation warning will be generated when multiple definitions are specified for the same Effective Date in the next release of the software.

Techalert tafx26-0001

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