Supervisor localization for large-scale discrete-event systems

We propose a top-down approach, called supervisor localization, to distributed control of large-scale discrete-event systems (DES). The essence of this approach is to allocate, or localize, `external´ supervisory control action to individual plant components as their `internal´ control strategies. To cope with state explosion of large DES, we develop a decomposition-aggregation procedure that employs a flexible decentralized and hierarchical architecture which reduces computational effort in localization. This procedure is demonstrated in detail on a benchmark Production Cell that has state size of order 10⁸.