Using Petri Nets and Heuristic Search Algorithms for Flexible Manufacturing System Scheduling

Abstract

Petri nets have been extensivly used to model the manufacturing system due to their power to describe complex
systems with their simple tools. However, the “state explosion” has prevented their use for solving real
scheduling problems. This paper proposes an algorithm that combines the BFS with heuristic functions and the
limited beam expansion to search on reachability graph for FMS scheduling.