Using Petri nets to represent production processes

A preliminary investigation, and extension of the power, of timed Petri nets to describe, model, and analyze production processes is reported. In particular, insights into real-time control aspects as well as the performance of flexible manufacturing systems are sought. Comparisons with previous investigative models are made. New and general modeling conventions are provided, which extend the realm of Petri net modeling capabilities. Various realistic aspects of manufacturing processes are modeled. Efficient algebraic tools to analyze a certain class of Petri nets are described [1]. We show that, under some structural assumptions, timed Petri net models of manufacturing processes translate into linear equations in a (max, +)- based algebra. Efficient algorithms can solve these equations for the purposes of both performance evaluation and real-time control.