Stable supervisory control of flexible manufacturing systems with fixed supply and demand rates

In this article, we develop a method for computing a stable supervisory con trol for a class of manufacturing systems (consisting of reconfigurable pro cessors and buffers with limited capacities) with fixed supply and demand r ates. It is shown that, with this method, we are able to (i) decide constru ctively whether a stable supervisory control exists for a given manufacturi ng system, and (ii) compute the stable supervisory control if it exists. Fu rthermore, the stable supervisory control thus obtained is complete in the sense that it contains all 'safe' sequences (of possibly concurrent buffer and processor activities) which guarantee the stability of the system. An e xample is presented to illustrate the proposed method. Implications and com putational complexity associated with this method are discussed.