Conveyor Interface

Overview

A method of controlling conveyer decision points was required for lab automation.   Job trays flow through a lab on a conveyer system, but the conveyer system needed a method of deciding what conveyer path a job tray needed to follow depending on the processes required or already done on a job.   A method of controlling these decision points was added to the Job Station maintenance program.  Each decision point can have its own job station designation with its own rules for directing a job down the conveyer path.

Setting Up The Job Station database

To designate a job station record as a conveyer decision point record, the first character of the station number must be entered as a “#”.This will allow access to the “Conveyer Rules” tab.  The Station type must be “Active” and the Station source must be “Equipment”.

All of the remaining fields in the “General” and “Job Flow” tabs can retain their default values, since they have no effect on the conveyer decision process.

The “Conveyer Rules” tab is where all the settings for a particular conveyer point take place.

There are 3 columns of 10 conditions in this tab.   All of the condition in any one must be valid for the conveyer decision to be sent as “OK”.  In other words, the conditions in a column are “AND” conditions while the columns themselves represent “OR” conditions.

When a condition is set within a column, it is removed as a selection from the other condition entries in the column.  Also, some condition are mutually exclusive, for instance, if you have selected a blocking method as one of the conditions, then all blocking methods are removed from the list of available conditions for that column.

Some conditions require you to enter a parameter value that is required for the condition.  The conditions that require the entry of a parameter are:

• “Cribbed edge thickness <”, requires the entry of the minimum cribbed edge thickness that will trigger this condition, entered as 99.9 mm
• “Less than X jobs”, only set this condition true if there are less than 999 jobs currently in this area.  Note that this feature has not yet been implemented. Setting it as a condition will have no effect on the decision point.
• “Specific material”, enter a specific material code to trigger this condition.
• “User point –xxxx”, requires a “0” or “1” parameter to be entered, a “0” setting means that the specified “User defined job flow label” is not required for the job, or “1” which means that the “User defined job flow label” is “Required” and “Done”  on this job. (User defined job flow labels are discussed below)

Operation

Conveyers are required to communicate with Rx-Universe via the OMA device interface.   The conveyer will initiate an Initialization session with OMICS to establish a connection.  Once the communication is established, the conveyer will request what job and decision point it needs information for, it will pass the Rx-Universe tray or Job number and  a 2 digit decision point to the OMA process, Rx-Universe will take this information and find the correct job, and then the  decision point request will be prefixed with the “#” to get the correct decision point station record, the OMA process will then analyze the conveyer rules for this decision point and return either a 0 or 1 back to the conveyer, based on the settings of the conveyer rules and the job being requested.

The labels used are user-defined labels _DP and _DECISION.

_DP is the decision point identifier (each decision point must be separately identified on the conveyor system) and corresponds to the job track station in Rx-Universe.  For example, the first decision point on the conveyor system would be 01, and identified by _DP=01, corresponding to job track station "#01" in Rx-Universe.

_DECISION indicates whether the tray should be diverted or not - _DECISION=1 means don't divert the tray, _DECISION=2 means divert the tray.  A special setting of _DECISION=99 means Rx-Universe could not find the job requested (bad code).

A sample communication session might look as follows; the conveyor has previously initialized with Rx-Universe and received a packet ID of 1234; the conveyor is requesting whether to divert job 6789 for decision point 5.  Rx-Universe responds with a confirmation the tray should be diverted.

Conveyor Request

<fs>REQ=1234<cr><lf>
JOB=6789<cr><lf>
_DP=05<cr><lf>
_DECISION=0<cr><lf>
<rs><gs>

Rx-Universe Response

<ack>
<fs>ANS=1234<cr><lf>
JOB=6789<cr><lf>
_DP=05<cr><lf>
_DECISION=2<cr><lf>
<rs><gs>

Conveyor response

<ack>

Setting up the User defined job flow labels

From the Main Menu in Rx-Universe, go to Setup, Scroll down to System Settings.  Under the “Job Tracking” tab, there is a table that allows for the entry of up to 40 user defined job flow labels.  These labels can be used to create optional conveyer decision point settings that can be sent to Rx-Universe remotely as part of a Remote order, or they can be manually set via the Order entry screens.

To set a User Defined job flow label thru the remote Order process, the outside procedure that creates the VCA flat file for the order must include the following label for each User Defined Job flow point being set.  The label name required is “_USER_DEF_JF” and it’s value must be set as follows, “DNN” where “D” = 0(not required) or 1(required and done) and “NN” which referes to the actual User defined job flow label number being set.  For example, _SER-DEF_JF=102, means that for this job, the NCC02 label will be set to “Required and Done” on the Job flow screen for the job being received.

Viewing User defined job flow labels on an order

From the customer service screen, select the desired job within the customer service grid, and using the right mouse button, select the “View Job Flow” from the available popup menu selections. 

A screen displaying the Job Flow settings for this job will be displayed.