In: Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Systems, Man and Cybernetics (SMC'96), 14-17 October 1996, Beijing, P.R. China, pages 2990-2995.. 1996. Available at ftp://ftp.cs.mun.ca/pub/publications/96-ICSMC.ps.Z.
Abstract: In composite schedules, several (identical or different) parts enter and leave a manufacturing cell in each cycle. A systematic method of generating all composite schedules is proposed, and it is shown that the generated schedules can easily be transformed into timed Petri net models. Invariant analysis of these timed net models provides performance characteristics of the cell. The characteristics are obtained in analytical (or symbolic) form, so they are applicable to a wide spectrum of specific cases. Simple examples illustrate an application of the proposed approach to a robotic cell with three machines.
Keywords: invariant analysis, manufacturing cells, manufacturing systems, timed Petri nets.