Home > Process Modeling and Simulation Concepts > Resources and Resource Types
Resources are organized hierarchically, in whatever way is best for you and your organization. But, there are restrictions to be aware of.
Children of a given resource must have the same root resource type as the parent resource. For example, a resource named “Marketing,” of type “Group,” can have a child resource, “Web Marketing,” of type “Role,” only if “Group” and “Role” are both defined as sub-types of “Organization” in the Define Resource Types dialog box. (From the Model menu, select Resource Types). In this scenario, the root resource type is “Organization.” There are five built-in root resource types: Organization, Labor, IT Architecture, Tool, Infrastructure, and Location.
The built-in “Person” resource type is an exception to the normal restriction. Resources of type “Person” can be children of Labor and Organization resources and their sub-types.
By default, new swimlanes represent an Organization resource that is created automatically, if necessary. When the first activity shape that acquires a resource is added to a swimlane, then a Person resource is automatically created and allocated to the Organization, if necessary. An Organization does not perform activity work, only non-organizations allocated to organizations do activity work. Activity shapes do not require resources for a simulation to run. For example, the Start activity of a new process diagram does not require a resource by default.
In an iGrafx model, a non-organization resource can be a single (individual) resource, a finite group of identical resources (pool), or an unlimited number of identical resources. Resources are allocated and queued independently. You can specify queuing method and acquire rules on the Allocations tab of the Define Resources dialog box to set the order in which multiple allocated resources are chosen and the sequence for resources to enter the queue.
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