ocons/conveyor-belt

Simulation of a factory production line around a single conveyor belt.

conveyor-belt

Simulation of a factory production line around a single conveyor belt.

There is a factory production line around a single conveyor belt. Components (of type A and B) come onto the start of the belt at random intervals; workers must take one component of each type from the belt as they come past, and combine them to make a finished product. The belt is divided into fixed-size slots; each slot can hold only one component or one finished product. There are a number of worker stations on either side of the belt, spaced to match the size of the slots on the belt, like this (fixed-width font ASCII pic):

  v   v   v   v   v      workers

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| A |   | B | A | P | -> conveyor belt

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  ^   ^   ^   ^   ^      workers

In each unit of time, the belt moves forwards one position, and there is time for a worker on one side of each slot to EITHER take an item from the slot or replace an item onto the belt. The worker opposite them can't touch the same belt slot while they do this. So you can't have one worker picking something from a slot while their counterpart puts something down in the same place. Once a worker has collected one of both types of component, they can begin assembling the finished product. This takes an amount of time, so they will only be ready to place the assembled product back on the belt on the fourth subsequent slot. While they are assembling the product, they can't touch the conveyor belt. Workers can only hold two items (component or product) at a time: one in each hand.

Create a simulation of this, with three pairs of workers. At each time interval, the slot at the start of the conveyor belt should have an equal (1/3) chance of containing nothing, a component A or a component B. Run the simulation for 100 steps, and compute how many finished products come off the production line, and how many components of each type go through the production line without being picked up by any workers.