Try the transport interruption
Run the baseline, then choose the ten-day transport outage. Storage can fill even while upstream work continues. Compare the queue, unfinished material and completed-shipment lead time. The numbers are invented; this is a capacity conversation, not an operational forecast.
Read the day order and units · Why flow is only one view of a state
Scenario
Deterministic result
A low completed-shipment lead time can coexist with a large unfinished queue. Use both measures.
Where material waits
End-of-day queues in conserved material-equivalent units. Storage is included here in material units; its capacity is entered in package-equivalents.
Use of available processing capacity
An entirely unavailable stage has no bar; its table entry distinguishes unavailable capacity from unused capacity.
| Stage | Final queue · material u | Use of available capacity | Highest pressure · days |
|---|
Shipped flow and lead time
Daily shipped package-equivalents
Mean age of each day’s shipments · days
Lead time is shipment day minus arrival day, weighted by material quantity. It can be zero because several stages can execute on the same day. Gaps mean no shipments, not zero-day lead time.
Daily values · accessible chart data
| Day | Arrivals | Characterization | Segregation | Size | Packaging | Assay | Storage | Shipped | Shipment age | Storage blocked assay? |
|---|
Pressure is a clue
The heuristic counts days with the largest end-of-day queue divided by the entered daily capacity. Assay and transport use package-equivalents. A positive queue at zero capacity ranks first; ties use route order. Empty days have no winner. Planned/random downtime is shown through the queues, not an infinite outage-day score. This does not establish a bottleneck or the best intervention.
Try changing only assay, transport or storage. Compare actual shipped flow, unfinished material and blocked days before drawing a conclusion. Storage blocking is measured separately because storage is a buffer, not a processing rate.
Stress comparison
Seeded arrivals and assay/transport outages vary; all capacities and other assumptions stay fixed. Results describe this toy distribution.
Choose Run stress comparison to sample the current scenario.
What the queues mean
A deliberately small model
- Each day’s fractional batch arrives, then characterization, segregation, size reduction and packaging execute in that order.
- Assay reserves space for its passing fraction in storage. Rework returns to the end of the packaging queue and waits until at least the next day.
- Transport then removes passed material from storage. Space freed by transport becomes available to assay the following day. Zero storage permits no direct handover.
- Queues use FIFO at entry to each stage. Rework retains its original arrival date but rejoins the back of the packaging queue.
Upstream queues are unbounded within the finite horizon. “Size reduction” is a stage name: it changes neither conserved material nor volume here. There are no travel times, working calendars, service-time distributions, waste-acceptance rules, crew couplings, degradation or measured facility data.
Two ledgers, explicit limits
Material u is an abstract conserved quantity. Incoming material equals clean release + shipment + unfinished material. It is not a mass, activity or safety measure.
Package eq adds the policy’s allowance once at first packaging. Assay, storage and transport consume this expanded load; rework does not expand it again. Packaging capacity counts material units, including repeat visits. All other entered capacities are used as entered.
Storage-blocked days require positive assay work prevented by insufficient storage. Empty zero-capacity storage does not count. Peak storage is measured after assay, before transport; a separate end-of-day peak is also reported.
Utilization divides processed work by available capacity; a stage unavailable for the whole run shows “unavailable”. Unfinished age is current residence time, not its eventual lead time. Stress shipment lead percentiles omit runs with no shipments and report that count.
Concept preserved from Hazard Morphospace
A route position is only one part of a state
A batch moving along the route does not tell us its hazard or condition. The earlier morphospace used three axes: chemical hazard, radiological intensity and structural integrity, with time as a fourth dimension. The useful idea is to keep these dimensions visible together instead of calling every movement “progress”.
| Illustrative state | Chemical concern | Radiological concern | Structural condition | What changed? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A · initial description | High | High | Uncertain | Starting assumptions |
| B · after observation | High | High | Known to be poor | Knowledge improved; the physical condition did not improve automatically |
| C · assumed containment intervention | Medium | High | Improved containment | Two hypothetical effects; radiological concern remains high |
Inspection supplies evidence. It does not itself cause linear hazard reduction or structural improvement. Waste categories are not fixed comparable points on these axes. The former inspection-speed control, invented coordinates and scientific-looking category markers have therefore been retired.
For an editable state/transition model, visit States & relationships. Read the source disposition.