Have you ever wondered what’s going on in your Queues?

‘Current Contents’ is one of my favorite tools in SIMUL8; it is a simple and fast way to see exactly what is going on in your Queues or Activities. Getting this detail really helps in building your simulations and understanding how your processes behave. So how does it work?

Getting the ‘Current Contents’ of a Queue or an Activity:

1. Left-click to select a Queue or an Activity.
2. In the Properties menu select the option ‘Current Contents’.
3. The area at number 3 shows each individual work item. You can click to jump to an item or scroll with the arrow keys.
4.  At number 4 on the image below you can see information on the selected work item. You can switch between the tabs below to see details of Labels, Resources or Other information, e.g. the time that the work item entered the simulation.
5. Top tip! If you float the mouse the section highlighted at number 5 below you will get a pop-up showing the associated memo for each Label; a really handy reminder for keeping track of what each value means in the process.

Copy or Export the data from ‘Current Contents’ to a spreadsheet:
For analysis you may want to copy all of the details from the Current Contents window out to a spreadsheet:

6. Right-click anywhere in this area.
7. Select the option to “Copy All to Clipboard”.
8. Paste into a spreadsheet.

This is the manual way of doing this. SIMUL8 also has the power to automate this process, change the formatting and even add filters by using a little bit of Visual Logic (not covered here but please post a reply if you would like to know more about how to do this).