Analysis and Synthesis of the Flexible Manufacturing System Potential Behaviors

The Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS) behaviors can be successfully modeled by Delay Time Petri Nets (DTPNs). The DTPN contains delayed arcs, timed, untimed, controlled and uncontrolled transitions. To manage the FMS complexity the reduction method can be used. A new method of study using a defined DTPN language is proposed. Due to the fact that the reachability graph of the DTPN corresponding to a FMS is too large, a Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used off-line for the synthesis of the DTPN that fulfills the specification and avoids deadlocks. An on-line controller can be used to schedule the controlled transitions.