On achieving reachability paths of Petri nets

Abstract

Petri net is a powerful graphical and mathematical tool for analysis and design of discrete event systems. This paper focuses on the reachability path problems in Petri nets. Thereby, two algorithms are developed to create the set of minimal paths and the shortest path to lead the system from the given initial state to a desired state. Both of them are enlightened by dynamic programming approach; that is to say, they are backward techniques. Proposed algorithms do not deal with the reachability tree or graph of the net under analysis and use memory only for storing the obtained paths unlike the approaches based on the reachability tree. Moreover, the algorithms can be applied to general Petri nets without any restriction.