In: Proc. 9th IFAC Symp. on Information Control in Manufacturing (INCOM'98), 24-26 June 1998, Nancy-Metz, France, Vol. 2, pages 435-440. 1998.
Abstract: This paper addresses the scheduling problem for a class of manufacturing systems with multiple resources and blocking. A set of jobs is to be processed and each job requires a sequence of operations. Each operation may need more than one resource. Upon completion of an operation, resources needed in the next operation of the same job cannot be released and the remaining resources cannot be released until the start of the next operation. The scheduling problem consists of sequencing the operations on the resources in order to avoid deadlocks and to minimize the makespan. The system is first modeled using Petri nets, then the deadlock constraints are formulated in terms of the Petri net model, and feasibility conditions are established for a given schedule. Finally, two heuristics are proposed to obtain deadlock-free schedules.
Keywords: Petri nets, deadlock-free scheduling, multiple resources.