In some situations, it is necessary to keep track of the age structure of a stock of material or objects. For example, you may want to track the number of people in each of a number of age groups, the number of people in a company at different experience levels (e.g., new hire, experienced, expert), or the number of trucks of different age groups on the road.
To model such a situation, you cannot use a single Stock (e.g., an Integrator). Rather, you must disaggregate the total stock into multiple categories (referred to as cohorts). Each cohort “graduates” to the next cohort over time (and can only move in one direction). However, each cohort may grow and shrink for other reasons (e.g., if you were modeling a population of people, a particular category could grow due to immigration, and shrink due to emmigration and death). Note that these rates of growing and shrinking are likely a function of the specific cohort (e.g., death rates).
GoldSim provides several methods for modeling aging chains. One of these involves using an Integrator and processing a specialized discrete change signal (called a Push). The advanced option to Provide a Pushed_Out discrete change output is used for this method:
Learn more about:
Modeling Aging Chains Using Integrators with Discrete Pushes