Activation time: the time when the stated duration for this activation has passed and the model element is notified of it.

 

Activation processing, processing of an activation: the actions that are done at the activation time of an activation.

 

An activation is an event that is triggered during the simulation of the process model. The activation of a process step or flow is basically the simulation period of that process step or flow. The duration of activation which is set at the creation of the activation, is the processing time of the process step or flow, the ordering time for a material resource or the interval between the regular orders for a material order. An activation is always linked to one model element, currently process step, flow or resource. A model element can have several activations at a time, either active or suspended.

 

An activation can be in two states, suspended and active. In the suspended state the activation waits for a certain event to happen, for example some resources to become available. In the active state the activation waits until the activation duration has passed and when this happens it informs the model element of it. The activation has the knowledge of the case in which the activation was created, it has priority (the bigger, the more important the activation is), a flag indicating whether it can be suspended in the middle of its activation and a type. The activation type is meaningful to the model element processing this activation. The types of the activations are:

•AT_CREATE_T, used for starting process steps and flows to indicate the time when the next case is started

•AT_ACTIVATION_T, used for process steps and flows to indicate the time when the processing of the process step or flow is complete

•AT_ORDER_T, used for material resources to indicate the time when an order has been received

•AT_REGULAR_ORDER_T, used for material resources to indicate the time when an order happening at regular intervals has been received (regular orders cannot be made currently, this is a limitation in the user interface of the resource dialog)

 

The activations are stored in the simulation queue object in two lists. One list contains all active activations ordered by their activation time. If there are several activations with the same activation time, they are ordered by their priority, the highest priority first. The other list contains the suspended activations and is ordered by the activation priority.