An overview of research on discrete event dynamical systems

Research into discrete event dynamical systems is motivated by the need to extend the scope of systems theory to include manufacturing systems, communication networks and other technological systems, whose evolution is in accordance with the occurrence, at possibly unknown irregular intervals, of discrete events. The emphasis is on modelling such systems for the purposes of performance evaluation and control. There is a wide diversity in the perspectives employed and the formalisms and paradigms used. However, it is possible, conceptually, to classify various models according to the level of abstraction employed. Thus, there are models at the logical level where the emphasis is on the sequence of events listed in their order of occurrence. There is work at the temporal level where the emphasis is on the time taken for events to be completed. There is also work at the stochastic level where the emphasis is on event-valued and time-related random variables. The paper discusses work on hybrid knowledge-based simulation, perturbation analysis and FMS queueing and routeing, at temporal and stochastic levels