On the application of coloured Petri nets to computer aidedassembly planning

摘要

The problem of assembly process planning is particularly criticalfor the automation and integration of production, due to thecombinatorial complexity and the requirement of both flexibility andproductivity. Several planning methodologies and techniques have beenproposed in the literature, using an approach limited to specificproduct typologies and structures. Some of them are more suitable fordedicated automated assembly and assembly lines than for flexibleautomated assembly and flexible assembly systems (FAS) and assembly jobshops. Due to the time-based competition, both cycle time reduction andtask parallelism increase require a technique suitable to the generationof assembly plans with flexibility, efficiency and parallelism. Thepaper presents and discusses the application of coloured Petri nets(CPN) and timed coloured Petri nets (TCPN) to the computer aidedassembly planning (CAAP) problem, both to online and off-line planning,and presents a prototype CAAP architecture, that is implemented andvalidated by means of the assembly planning of an industrial product