A Systematic Approach to Modeling Re-entrant Manufacturing Systems with Colored Petri Nets

Competitive pressures are influencing manufacturers to produce high quality products at reduced product lead times. The motivation for being able to model a manufacturing system is to be able to investigate the system before it is constructed in order to reduce errors and maximize efficiency. This study intends to outline an approach to modeling re-entrant manufacturing systems using Colored Petri Nets (CPNs). CPNs provide a powerful modeling framework appropriate for simulating distributed and concurrent processes with both synchronous and asynchronous communication. A CPN model is an executable representation of a system consisting of states of the system and events that cause the system to change its state. Through simulations of a CPN model, it is possible to examine various scenarios and behaviors of a system. This study will present a systematic approach to modeling and simulating re-entrant manufacturing systems with CPNs.