An architecture for flexible manufacturing cells with alternate machining and alternate sequencing

One of the characteristics of flexible manufacturing systems (FMS's) is tha t they can consider multiple part routings due to alternate machining and a lternate sequencing in the processing of parts. This paper presents a new a rchitecture based on colored Petri nets (CPN's) that allows the supervisory controller of a flexible manufacturing cell to consider alternate machinin g and alternate sequencing in real time control of the cell. This capabilit y for real time alternate routing is an extension of prior research on the application of CPN to modeling FMS's.