Evaluation of jobshops with random manufacturing times: a Petri net approach

Use is made of event graphs, a particular type of Petri net, to evaluate job shops when manufacturing times are random variables and the control is defined as the sequence of product types at the entrance of each machine. Under very general assumptions, the cycle time of the system converges in probability to a constant. A heuristic algorithm which leads to a near-optimal solution of the problem (an optimal solution being the minimal work-in-process which allows the maximal productivity, i.e. the minimal cycle time, knowing the control) is derived from previous results