Modeling, Analysis and Simulation of Failures in a Materials Handling System with Extended Petri Nets

This paper models, analyzes, accommodates and simulates potential failures which may occur in a materials handling system with Extended Petri nets (EPNs). EPNs are shown to be able to cope with various important failure situations that occur in a manufacturing system through the definition of six different types of places. Detailed EPN based subnets are provided to study and accommodate occurred failures. The approach described proposes an efficient methodology to generate an overall EPN design to model and analyze potential system failures at different levels of detail. It has been observed that the study of boundedness properties 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 are preserved. The Stochastic Petri Net Package (SPNP) is used for simulation studies.