Modelling and simulation of an intelligent flexible manufacturing system via high-level object Petri nets (HLOPN)

A dynamic model of a flexible manufacturing system (FMS) is considered based on the information characteristics of system infrastructure. According to the physical architecture and working requirements, a software framework for FMS modelling and simulation is proposed to describe the parallel flow of different work-pieces in the shop. The model is based mainly on the concepts of both object-oriented programming and high-level Petri net methods. A material transportation protocol is designed to realize the respective processing of routine orders of work-pieces within the main resources of the FMS shop. Using a specially designed protocol, a fully automated job shop FMS can be achieved. An FMS simulation tool that can show the dynamic process of all the system resources during task execution is finally introduced.