Novel method for heuristic modelling of flexible manufacturing systems

Abstract

Flexible manufacturing systems (FMS) play an important role in industrial automation. They belong to a class of systems known as discrete event systems (DES) representing varying events with time. The modeling and control of such systems poses a challenge of handling uncertainties in resources and sequences for optimization. Presently the tools used for modeling such systems including Petri nets are constrained in the face of uncertainties in the system. A modified approach using new fuzzy logic formalism in Petri nets is proposed in this paper as a solution to overcome the problem. The utility of this formulation is that apart from the validity, it is adaptable to practical implementation in sequence controllers normally employed in FMS.

Keywords

• flexible manufacturing system (FMS)
• fuzzy Petri nets
• programmable logic controllers (PLC)