Object-oriented design of flexible manufacturing systems

This thesis presents a systematic method for the design and modeling of flexible manufacturing systems, using object-oriented concepts and Petri nets. In the method proposed, we first define the system components in terms of an object model consisting of hierarchical sets of classes and operations. Secondly, we model the dynamic aspects of the system using statecharts, including exceptions. As a third step, we derive Petri nets from those statecharts to realize the concurrency present in the system. Finally we develop a hierarchy of controllers, corresponding to the layers of the object model, for the independent components of the system based on the Petri nets obtained in the previous step.