A Petri net approach to investigating push and pull paradigms in flexible factory automated systems

Abstract

SUMMARY This paper shows Petri nets (PNs) as a powerful tool to investigate the problem often encountered in manufacturing systems management, namely comparing the performance of a flexible factory automated system (FFAS) operating under push and pull paradigms. The difficulty in solving this type of problems is compounded by many parameters such as processing times at work cells, number of automated guided vehicles and their routeings, lot sizes, and setup times. The PN method to solve such a problem is illustrated by considering an FFAS. Its PN models are formulated and then analysed to compare the performance of FFAS with ‘pushrsquo; and ‘pull’ paradigms. The results show that for the particular FFAS and operational parameters, the ‘push’ paradigm outperforms the ‘pull’ one. It is concluded that PNs are a suitable tool to conduct performance analysis before adopting the ‘push’ or ‘pull’ paradigm.