Mind the gap: Expanding communication options in decentralized discrete-event control

Frameworks that incorporate communication into decentralized supervisory control theory address the following problem: find locations in the evolution of the plant behavior where some supervisors send information so that a supervisor that was unable to make the correct control decision prior to receiving external information, is now capable of making the correct control decision. Proposed solutions to this problem identify an earliest and a latest placement where such communication results in the synthesis of a correct control solution. In addition to a first and last communication opportunity, there may be a selection of intermediate possibilities where communication would produce the correct control solution. We present a computable procedure to identify a broader range of suitable communication locations.