Industrial Applications of Petri Nets: System Modelling and Simulation

Resumen

Petri Nets (PN) can be interpreted as an underlying global structure common to a family of formalisms with different levels of abstraction and interpretations, which constitute a paradigm for the modeling, simulation, analysis, synthesis and implementation of discrete systems. Due to their efficiency to cope with concurrence, parallel evolutions and synchronism, they have been widely used in automated manufacturing systems, in practically all the levels of decision-making and detail. Based on a previous work, this paper complements the analysis of the use of PN for the modeling and simulation of industrial systems. A main stage in the PN modeling methodology is the choice of the appropriate PN formalism, depending on the level of abstraction of the formalism and to the interpretative extensions they are provided with. Special attention is paid to the semantics or interpretation of timed transitions, as well as to the aim of the model. Moreover, even when dealing with DES, the intrinsic nature of the parts of the model (discrete, continuous or hybrid) must be considered. Continuous PNs, was originally devised like an approach to deal with discrete systems efficiently when the well-known problem of state explosion occurs; but they can also be used as a formalism to model continuous concepts of the production systems (as usual with Forrester Diagrams in system dynamics).