Modeling production systems with inventory using hybrid Petri nets

Abstract

We deal with the problem of modeling production systems where inventory management is predominant with respect to other aspects of the production cycle. The model we use, called first-order hybrid Petri nets, is a hybrid model that combines fluid and discrete event dynamics and enables us to simulate the dynamic concurrent activities of inventory management systems (IMS). It also provides a modular representation of an IMS, thus making it useful even when dealing with large dimension systems. Finally, a real application case of a cheese factory is considered: all the numerical data are relative to an existing plant, and simulation is carried out with the available software SIRPHYCO.