An application of supervisory control methods for a serial/parallel multi-part flow line: modelling and deadlock analysis

The main purpose of this paper is to model and analyze a reconfigurable manufacturing system (RMS) applying existing supervisory controller design and analysis methods. The RMS introduced in this paper was originally developed to replace traditional large-volume production lines, allowing more flexibility. In this paper, the modelling for supervisory controllers and the analysis of the deadlock for RMS are performed with two existing supervisory controller design and analysis methods. One method is based on the Petri net (PN) synthesis method using resource control nets (RCN). The other is a rule-based matrix formalism constructed with traditional industrial engineering tools. A typical example of RMS with serial and parallel part-flow is presented. Also, the applicability of each method for RMS is investigated.