Material Resupply Icon
Material Resupply nodes represent external sources of material entering a ReliaSim model. They are used to model incoming supply such as raw materials, purchased components, or replenishment streams that feed the rest of the process.
A material resupply node behaves like a buffer combined with a constraint. It provides storage capacity while also applying a rate limit to incoming supply, allowing you to model how quickly material becomes available to the system. Because it is treated as a source, it does not require upstream connections and serves as an entry point for material into the model.
Material resupply nodes can experience interruptions, making them well-suited for representing supplier delays, delivery variability, or replenishment outages. When a resupply node is interrupted, downstream operations may become starved, allowing ReliaSim to capture the impact of unreliable supply on overall system performance.
When building a model, material resupply nodes are typically placed at the beginning of a flow to represent external inputs. They are useful when supply itself is constrained or unreliable, rather than assumed to be infinite. As with other node types, it’s often best to start with simple rates and capacities, then refine interruption behavior as you better understand how upstream supply affects downstream operations.