Timed coloured Petri nets and their application to logistics
Aalst, WMP Wil Van Der · TU/e Research Portal · 1992
Chapter 1 Introduetion 1.1 Problem statementRecently, logistics has become an important issue in many organizations.This is a direct consequence of the fact that modern organizations are required to offer a wide variety of products, in less time and at reduced prices.To improve their logistics function, many organizations have integrated the control of the logistic activities such as production, transportation, storage, acquisition and distribution.This integration complicates the management of the logistic processes.The complexity of the control problems encountered in logistics urges the necessity of an integrated framework for the modelling and analysis of logistic systems.This monograph focuses on the modelling and analysis of complex logistic systems and outlines solutions based on a timed coloured Petri net model.Although these solutions are useful in the context of logistics, their application is not limited to the logistic domain.Examples of other application domains which may benefit from the results presented in this monograph are: flexible manufacturing systems, distributed information systems and reai-time systems.In fact most of the results apply to systems which are: dynamic The systems we are interested in are subject to changes.At any moment the system has a certain state, at a later time this state may have changed.discrete We restriet ourselves to discrete systems, i.e. changes in the system occur discontinuously.These changes only happen at a fini te number of time points.distributed A distributed system is composed of a number of autonorneus subsystems which interact and share resources in performing a specific task.These subsystems are often physically distributed.In other words: we consider distributed .systemsthat change in a discrete fashion.We call these systems discrete dynamic systems.We use a Petri net based approach to the modelling aud analysis of these discrete dynamic systems.Petrinets are appropriate for thc modelling of distributed systcms, 1. 7. OTHER METHODS CHAPTER 6. CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER RESEARCH building blocks.Without doubt, this library would increase the productivity of the modelling process.Furthermore, such a library would facilitate the diffusion of the logistic knowledge stored in the building blocks by domain experts.