In: Proc. 9th IFAC Symp. on Information Control in Manufacturing (INCOM'98), 24-26 June 1998, Nancy-Metz, France, Vol. 2, pages 33-38. 1998.
Also in: Control Engineering Practice, Vol. 8, No. 1, pages 63-69. 2000.
Abstract: Mass production of goods with customer specific features is mostly carried out on production lines. Job-dependent processing times in the lines individual work zones necessitate line sequencing in order to use the line well to capacity. In this paper, a two-step method allowing fast sequencing even for huge numbers of jobs and product types is presented. The knowledge about the line characteristics and the possible jobs is modeled using a Petri net. This model is independent of the set of jobs to be scheduled. Based on the Petri net T-invariants, a valid production sequence is determined efficiently for a particular job set.
Keywords: Petri nets, T-invariants, flexible manufacturing systems, scheduling algorithms.