Modelling, analysis, and simulation of manufacturing processes with alternative structural configurations by parametric Petri nets

Resumen

A new approach for the application of the formalism of the Petri nets to the modelling, analysis, and simulation of manufacturing processes, regarded as discrete event systems, is proposed in this paper. This methodology builds a bridge between two conceptual strategies for the development of the previous tasks. On the one hand, the strategy based on the paradigm of "divide and conquer", which decomposes the process into so many subprocesses as he number of the existing alternative structural configurations. On the other hand, the parametric approach, whe single model can represent the whole amount of information required to describe the complete set of alternative uctural configurations. The basis of both strategies is presented and unified under the same conceptual framework and two algorithms are described for allowing the transformation of a model developed under any of these paradigms into the other one. An application example illustrates the results in the application of the mentioned methodology. © 2013 American Scientific Publishers All rights reserved.