Event graphs in performance evaluation of manufacturing processes

Timed event graphs are a class of Petri nets which can model some kinds of manufacturing processes. In this paper, a manufacturing system consisting in the repetitive production of different classes of products is represented by a timed event graph, so as to analyse and optimize its performances by exploiting the related analytical results. An optimization problem is stated, with the objective of maximizing the throughput of the system while minimizing the work-in-progress. The solution of such a problem can be found by solving first a linear fractional programming problem, and then an integer linear programming one