Colored Petri net model for significant reduction of invariants in flexible manufacturing systems

This study focuses on simplification of the Petri net model of a manufacturing system for reduction in the total number of elementary circuits to decrease the analysis time of systems during investigations. A flexible manufacturing system with a tool sharing environment has been developed and investigated using colored Petri nets. The proposed model is extended and implemented on large flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) having multiple machines and tools. The main objective of this study is to reduce the resultant invariants, as the addition of parts, machines, and tools in black token Petri net models exponentially increases the resultant invariants. Various scenarios have been investigated and compared using the developed model. The structure of the developed colored Petri net (CPN) model allows grouping of the tools that reduces the total number of places in the model. Therefore, it is evident that the developed CPN model reduces the resultant invariant that results in reduced complexity of the system.