Performance optimization of manufacturing systems with time-aggregate production demand

The paper has the purpose of introducing a new model to be used for production planning and control purposes and of developing effective tools for the performance optimization of the considered manufacturing systems. The proposed model will be denoted as "repetitive manufacturing system with time-aggregate production demand" and can be considered as a "variation" of the basic production-to-order model. It also allows to consider the performance optimization problem of the manufacturing system within a "quasi-periodic" framework. Actually, the modelling hypotheses make it possible to think of a "cyclic" behaviour of the machines which have to perform different types of operations. The proposed model can be represented by means of a particular class of Petri nets, the Timed Event Graphs. Through such a representation, significant performance optimization problems can be addressed as reported in the paper.