Pareto Modeling of Discrete Manufacturing Systems by Signal Interpreted Petri Nets

This paper proposes a new approach for obtaining a model of discrete manufacturing systems according to the Pareto principle (i.e., the 80/20 principle). The basic idea is to get the plant model by transforming an already existing controller model. The controller is described by a signal interpreted Petri net (SIPN) that represents the logic control algorithm by which the plant operates. By converting the incidence matrix, firing conditions, and output vectors of the controller SIPN, a plant model can be obtained that represents the fault-free plant behavior under different actuator inputs. The proposed approach reduces significantly the engineering efforts and can be applied to manufacturing systems controlled by a programmable logic controller. An example is given to illustrate the proposed approach.