Modeling FMS through PN: the modular structural synthesis

We provide a formal approach to obtain a discrete event system (DES) representation of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS). The complexity of real FMSs typically yields formidable problems in modeling such systems and in their representation by means of any predefined formalism, for instance Petri nets (PNs). A technique which allows one to obtain the PN from a description of a system is called a synthesis procedure. A synthesis procedure is presented which is based on a modular conception: a generic FMS can be easily divided, from a physical point of view, into a set of connected resources totally independent one from the other. Once such resources have been identified, we represent them by means of a set of independent subnets, the Petri net modules (PNMs), and then we can apply the synthesis procedure. For this reason, the proposed procedure has been called modular structural synthesis