Solving resource contention problem in flexible manufacturing systems using Petri nets and a rule-based approach

The present work focuses on the development of a shop floor controller using Petri nets and a rule-based approach. An FMS consisting of three workstations with in-process buffers and two robots is taken as a case study. Stochastic Petri nets are used to model various activities in the manufacturing system. A new concept of P-Levels is introduced for the solution of problems of resource contention and circular wait by assigning priorities to the claimant parts in a multibatch manufacturing system. A case study also shows the capabilities of the developed system controller with relevant results. Various possibilities about the number of batches processed simultaneously are considered for the example case.