Petri Nets and Machines of Things that Flow

Abstract

Petri nets are an established graphical formalism for modeling and analyzing the behavior of systems. An important consideration of the value of Petri nets is their use in describing both the syntax and semantics of modeling formalisms. Describing a modeling notation in terms of a formal technique such as Petri nets provides a way to minimize ambiguity. Accordingly, it is imperative to develop a deep and diverse understanding of Petri nets. This paper is directed toward a new, but preliminary, exploration of the semantics of such an important tool. Specifically, the concern in this paper is with the semantics of Petri nets interpreted in a modeling language based on the notion of machines of "things that flow." The semantics of several Petri net diagrams are analyzed in terms of "flow of things." The results point to the viability of the approach for exploring the underlying assumptions of Petri nets.