In: Journal of Systems and Software, Vol. 45, No. 1, pages 61-78. 1999.
Abstract: Petri nets have become increasingly popular for flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) modeling and control because they accurately capture the concurrent, non-deterministic and time-dependent properties of the systems. While offering many advantages, conventional Petri net models suffer from some serious problems that limit their usability as design models for complex FMS. Central to these problems is the lack of an engineering support for incremental design, refinement, and analysis of large-scale systems. In this paper, we present an architecture-driven approach for the modeling and design of FMS that effectively addresses the problems while leveraging the strengths of Petri nets. The approach has two major aspects: The first is a Net-based and Object-based Architectural Model (NOAM) that introduces a well-founded architectural framework into the Petri nets notation and lays a foundation to support formal design. The second is a modeling method based on NOAM that uses architecture decomposition and refinement as the basis to reduce design complexity, to provide smooth transition from informal to formal design, and to support incremental refinement and analysis. A case study using NOAM for FMS modeling is provided to show the applicability of our approach.
Keywords: Petri nets, flexible manufacturing systems, incremental design, large-scale systems.