Supervisor Simplification in FMSs: Comparative Studies and New Results Using Petri Nets

Abstract

Modern complex systems require intensive application of sophisticated supervisors. Structural simplification techniques are one of the fundamental researches in the context of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). They can reduce implementation cost, mitigate fabrication complexity, and improve reliability. Several typical methods have been developed along this direction. In order to thoroughly explore their effectiveness and performance, we not only conduct a comparison investigation but also develop some new theoretical results. Several analytical results and performance measures are proposed for their qualitative and quantitative comparison. Our approach can assist researchers and practitioners to better comprehend the inherent mechanisms and relative merits of these simplification methodologies as well as their applicability in FMSs. This paper is motivated by FMSs' control; however, it is also applicable to other systems with discrete event controllers.