Sending a signal to an assigner state machine

Single assigner state machine

A single assigner is a state machine that manages competition on an association. Since there can be at most one instance of a single assigner per association, you can just address the signal to the association name like so:

Waiting for clerk -> /R1

Multiple assigner state machine

A multiple assigner provides one state machine instance per instance of some designated partitioning class. Extending the Customer-Clerk example we might manage competition separately within each Department. So the Department class is designated as the partitioning class and we have one state machine per Department instance. Therefore, you must provide both the association name and the Department instance to find the correct assigner state machine as shown:

my department .= /R3/Department
Waiting for clerk -> /R2(my department)

In a state activity of either kind of assigner, the ME keyword refers to the local state machine instance and not to any class instance.