Generic modeling of manufacturing processes using Petri net representations

This paper presents a methodology for modeling of manufacturing processes of mechanical parts. At the development of the model the need for describing all possible process variants in a single model and for defining generic model descriptions for a cluster of manufacturing tasks. The authors have developed a four level generic manufacturing process model. Entities in this model are easy to understand for production engineers and represented by Petri nets. In the paper, first the importance of the process model and its interconnections with other product-related models are emphasized. Following this, the manufacturing process model is described and its applications are outlined. Next, creation and evaluation of the process model is explained. Finally, the main characteristics of the model and the modeling activity are considered