A compact timed state space approach for the analysis of manufacturing systems

The state space (SS) analysis of a timed coloured Petri net (TCPN) has been used traditionally for validation and verification of system properties. Performance modelling using TCPN has also received the widespread attention of researchers in recent years as a promising alternative to improve productivity and competitiveness of present flexible manufacturing systems. In this article, a new computationally effective approach is introduced for designing efficient decision support tools based on the analysis of SSs, in which the computational time is an important requirement to deal with optimal scheduling, routing or planning policies. The SS analysis of a system specified in the TCPN formalism is faced with an algorithm in two stages, key implementation algorithmic aspects are considered to improve the time consuming tasks (transition evaluation, data management and information search). In order to provide good benchmarking results when applied to the optimisation of industrial scheduling problems, some examples are given and future work is addressed at the end of the article. Referentie: Mota, M. M., & Piera, M. A. (2011). A compact timed state space approach for the analysis of manufacturing systems: key algorithmic improvements.International Journal of Computer Integrated Manufacturing, 24(2), 135-153.