In: IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Vol. 17, No. 2, pages 126-132. February 1991.
Abstract: This paper deals with modeling of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) under uncertainty and evaluation of a rule base for on-line scheduling. To prevent uncertain events in FMS, such as failure of machine tools, repair time, and processing time, the authors develop continuous-time and discrete-time stochastic Petri nets with hierarchical structure for constructing the FMS model. For obtaining an efficient schedule of FMS with on-line real-time basis, the authors construct a rule base and evaluate the performance of the rule base using the FMS simulation system proposed in this paper.
Keywords: modelling (and) on-line scheduling (of) flexible manufacturing systems (using) stochastic nets; uncertainty; failure (of) machine tool; repair time; processing time; conntinuous-time, discrete-time stochastic net; hierarchical structure; performance evaluation.