Automatic notation of the physical structure of a flexible manufacturing system

It is essential to have a generic notation that can be associated to any pr oblem involved in the flexible manufacturing systems (FMS). Such a notation must allow any potential actor who has to deal with one of these points (r esearcher or industrialist) to present his FMS and the problem to be solved without ambiguity and in a unanimously recognized format. In this paper we propose a notation that both relies on basic elements given by the modeliz er and on analyzed complex structures. Examples of notation are presented, as well as a presentation of the automatic notation software under developm ent. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.