Petri Net-Based Emulation for a Highly Concurrent Pick-and-Place Machine

The emulation of pick-and-place machines, in order to compute their throughput rate for different products, is a key ingredient for capacity planning and scheduling of high-volume assembly lines where these machines are used. In this communication it is shown how an emulator can be built in the framework of Petri nets and how it can be instantiated for a particular setup and sequence of placements. Three advantages are argued for the proposed emulator. First, the emulation code can be generated automatically. Second, the model graphically represents the concurrency and synchronization aspects of the machine's operations. Third, it allows a formal representation of the machine's operations. © 1990 IEEE