Scheduling of multi-product batch plants based upon timed automata models

This paper reports on the successful application of a recently proposed method for solving scheduling problems by reachability analysis of timed automata. The jobs and the resources are modeled by a set of synchronized timed automata, and the scheduling problem is solved by a cost-optimal symbolic reachability analysis. The analysis searches for a path of states and state transitions from an initial state to a terminal state in which all jobs have been finished. The appeal of the approach is the intuitive and modular graphical modeling, and an efficient solution, as is illustrated here for a well-known case study from the chemical industry.