Modelling, scheduling and simulation of flexible manufacturing systems using extended stochastic high-level evaluation Petri nets

The present paper presents the new extended stochastic high-level evaluation Petri nets (ESHLEP-N) which are more suitable for modelling and simulation of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs). The advantages of ESHLEP-N lie in the fact that their resulting models are not only simpler, more intuitive and more descriptive, but also of the more inferential and decisive power. Based on the ESHLEP-N model, the scheduling and simulation expert system (ES) for the FMS is designed and established. With the help of the ES, we will put forward some new dynamic-rescheduling rules aiming at reducing no-inputs and blockings. The simulations show that the throughputs of the rescheduling can increase on an average by 6.48% as compared with those of the non-rescheduling. The comparison between the experiment on the real FMS and the simulation on the ES indicates that the ES is effective.