Abstract. There exists ample literature on Petri nets and its potential in the modelling, analysis, synthesis and implementation of systems in the manufacturing applications domain (see for example [54,15,18]; besides, in [66] an important bibliography is presented). This paper provides an examples-driven perspective. Nevertheless, not only complete examples from the application domain are considered. Manufacturing systems are frequently large systems, and conceptual complexity often appears because of some particular "local" constructions. The examples considered in this selected tour try to introduce in a progressive way some applied concepts and techniques. The starting point is an assembly cell, for which models concerning several phases of the design life-cycle are presented. Afterwards, some pull control and kanban management strategies are modelled. Then, two coloured models of production lines are presented. After that, a manufacturing system with two cells is modelled, and the difficulty of the practical analysis is shown. For very populated manufacturing systems or systems with high cadence, relaxation of discrete event models leads to hybrid and continuous approximations, an example of which will be shortly introduced.
Motivation and objectivesPetri Nets (PNs) constitute a well known paradigm for the design and operation of many systems allowing a discrete event view [53]. The purpose of this work is to present, in a tutorial style, some examples in which manufacturing systems are modelled and analysed. Several books about PNs and the design and operation of manufacturing systems have been published at the end of the last century [17,15,65,56,44,66]. In the sequel, the reader is assumed to be introduced to the main concepts in Petri Nets [50,42].Basically a case study driven perspective is provided in this work. Nevertheless, not only full examples from the application domain are considered. Manufacturing systems are frequently large systems, and conceptual complexity appears because of some particular constructions that appear in part of the system.