A Petri net approach to the modelling and analysis of flexible manufacturing systems

In this paper we present an approach for modelling and analyzing flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) using Petri nets. In this approach, we first build a Petri net model (PNM) of the given FMS in a bottom-up fashion and then analyze important qualitative aspects of FMS behaviour such as existence/absence of deadlocks and buffer overflows. The basis for our approach is a theorem we state and prove for computing the invariants of the union of a finite number of Petri nets when the invariants of the individual nets are known. We illustrate our approach using two typical manufacturing systems: an automated transfer line and a simple FMS.A shorter version of this paper was presented at the 1st ORSA/TIMS Special Interest Conference on FMSs, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, August 1984.