MODELING, ANALYSIS AND SIMULATION OF FAILURES IN A MATERIALS HANDLING-SYSTEM WITH EXTENDED PETRI NETS

This paper models, analyzes, accommodates and simulates potential fail ures which may occur in a materials handling system with Extended Petr i nets (EPNs). EPNs are shown to be able to cope with various importan t failure situations that occur in a manufacturing system through the definition of six different types of places. Detailed EPN based subnet s are provided to study and accommodate occurred failures. The approac h described proposes an efficient methodology to generate an overall E PN design to model and analyze potential system failures at different levels of detail. It has been observed that the stud of boundedness pr operties rather than the safeness properties of a manufacturing system with resource constraints leads to a better defined EPN system model. The subnet structural properties and the overall system properties ar e preserved. The Stochastic Petri Net Package (SPNP) is used for simul ation studies.