Modeling Manufacturing Systems with Stochastic Petri Nets

 This paper discusses models for manufacturing systems that are based on generalized stochastic Petri nets and on Markov decision processes. We employ generalized stochastic Petri nets to model manufacturing processes with high degree of uncertainty due to the human operator behavior. We extend the usual generalized stochastic Petri nets by allowing imprecision about probabilities to be explicitly represented. We then consider the translation of the resulting models into Markov decision processes with imprecise probabilities, so as to compute optimal policies. We introduce an algorithm that performs this translation. Keywords Scheduling, Automotive Manufacturing Lines, Markov Decision Processes, Petri Net, Imprecise Probabilities.