Specification and performance evaluation of Flexible Manufacturing Systems using a Bounded True Concurrent Process Algebra

This paper deals with the specification and analysis of Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMS). We use a timed process algebra called BTC (for Bounded True Concurrency) that we have developed from CSP and which takes into account that the available resources in a system have to be shared by all the processes. It is able to consider heterogeneous resources of any type (preemptable and non- preemptable) which makes it suitable for specifying FMS. We show by means of an example that the specifications obtained suit the real systems quite well, are straightforward and deadlock-free. Due to the great interest (and need) in obtaining shorter manufacturing lead times, we also carry out a performance evaluation using an algorithm which allows us to estimate the time required to evolve between states. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt to do this with process algebras, and we think that it is a good way to be able to split up the system into subsystems, which will be easily analyzed without the deadlock problems that researchers in Petri Nets have encountered.