Factory Floor Simulator

In this project I am simulating a factory floor operation.

This is based on a programming task received on one of the interviews that got me interested and curious.

The rules are as follows:

• Time is discrete and no action can take less than 1 unit of time.
• In the default settings picking up from and dropping objects onto the conveyor belt takes 1 unit of time.
• In the default settings constructing the finished product takes 4 units of time.
• The conveyor belt is empty at start and all slots are free (can be operated on).
• At each slot of the conveyor belt we place a worker on both sides of it.
• Only one worker can operate on any given slot at any given time.

Default materials required to make a product:

• A
• B

Default code for an empty slot on the conveyor belt:

• E

Default code for the finished product:

• P

The default layout of the factory floor:

            (worker) (worker) (worker)
A-B-E-E    |   A    |    E   |   E    |     E-E-E-E-P-E-E
            (worker) (worker) (worker)  

             slot0     slot1   slot2

(Feeder)        (Conveyor Belt)             (Receiver)

Basic principle of operation:

• The feeder supplies materials required to make a finished product.
• Workers at the conveyor belt slots check if they need and can pickup components.
• Once a worker collected all required materials he begins assembling the product.
• When the product is assembled and worker can operate on his conveyor belt slot (it is free and empty) the worker will drop the product.
• At each finished unit of time, the last item in the conveyor belt is moved to the receiver. We register if it is a finished product, component or an empty slot (this is to be able to provide efficiency metrics and optimization in the future)

Kubernetes deployments

Use your web browser to navigate to the server: factory-simulator.com/home

Deployment layout:

Currently, the ingress-service redirects requests coming from the browser. All those for api/ and static/ are pushed to django-backend-service on port 8000 which maps to the django instance. All other requests (so /) are pushed to angular-front-end-service on port 4200 which maps to nginx proxy serving the static content of the angular app. The django app connects to the postgres db through postgres-service on port 5432.

Local Deployment to Kubernetes

I use microk8s on linux. Make sure you have enabled DNS and ingress.

To deploy locally you have to add in /etc/hosts:

127.0.0.1 factory-simulator.com

This is to be able to access the application in using factory-simulator.com address in your browser.

Preparing images

from project root build and push the backend image:

docker build -t kilthar/factory-simulator-django:latest .
docker push kilthar/factory-simulator-django:latest

Build and push the frontend image:

cd front-end/
docker build -t kilthar/factory-simulator-angular:latest .
docker push kilthar/factory-simulator-angular:latest

For convenience just run: ./rebuild_docker_images.sh which will rebuild front and backend images and push to docker.

Deployment to kubernetes locally

from root of the project:

Delete existing deployment:

kubectl delete -f kubernetes/ -R

Deploy new version:

kubectl apply -f kubernetes/ -R