Operations scheduling in batch chemical plants with timed automata
Jeh-Hsuan Li, Wei-Chun Hsieh, Chuei‐Tin Chang · 2017
Manual synthesis of operation schedules for a given batch chemical process may be time-consuming and error-prone. The timed automata are utilized in the present work to develop a generic approach to automatically generate the best operation steps needed for achieving any predetermined goal(s). In particular, all embedded components and the control specifications/targets are characterized with automata constructed according to the proposed modeling rules. A system automaton is assembled with these components via parallel composition, and the optimal operation path then identified accordingly. A sequential function chart (SFC) and the corresponding Gantt chart can both be extracted from this path in practical applications. Two examples are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach.