Work Items

A Work Item is the work that is done in the organization being simulated.

Examples are:

  • Patients in a hospital
  • Invoices in an Accounts department
  • Products in a factory


Individual Work Items flow through the Activities in a simulation.

Each Work Item is of a “type” known as a “Work Item Type”.

Work item types, and therefore all the Work Items of that type, may have Labels attached to them. All Work Items of the same type have the same labels attached to them but the values in the labels for each individual Work Item may differ.

For example: a Work Item type called “Patient” may have a label called “illness” that may be set to 1 for some patients (for minor), 2 for some patients (for serious) and 3 for others (life threatening).

The values in the label can be changed using actions at Activities.

Attach a label to a Work Item type in the WORK ITEM TYPES dialog on the Advanced tab. The size of a Work Item can also be changed here.

To see the values in labels of an individual Work Item in your simulation use the contents button in either the Activity or Queue dialogs. (Or just Click with CTRL-SHIFT pressed where you see the Work Item on the screen).