Petri nets and production systems

Abstract

Modern production systems pose a diversity of problems all along their life cycle which are often treated with particular independent formalisms and techniques. Production systems can be viewed as discrete event, continuous, or hybrid systems. Petri nets are a family of formalisms which can be used for the modelling, analysis, implementation and control of these systems, with the benefit of improving the communication between stages of the life cycle. The utilisation of Petri nets in several of these stages is illustrated in this tutorial paper through a selected set of examples.