ABSTRACT
Petri nets were introduced in 1962 byDr. Carl AdamPetri (Petri 1962). Petri nets are a powerfulmodeling formalism in computer science, system engineering, and many other disciplines. Petri nets combine a well-definedmathematical theorywith a graphical representation of the dynamic behavior of systems. The theoretic aspect of Petri nets allows precise modeling and analysis of system behavior, while the graphical representation of Petri nets enables visualization of the modeled system state changes. This combination is the main reason for the great success of Petri nets. Consequently, Petri nets have been used to model various kinds of dynamic event-driven systems such as computers networks (Ajmone Marsan et al. 1986), communication systems (Merlin and Farber 1976; Wang 2006), manufacturing plants (Zhou and DiCesare 1989; Venkatesh et al. 1994; Desrochers and Ai-Jaar 1995), command and control systems (Andreadakis and Levis 1988), real-time computing systems (Tsai et al. 1995; Mandrioli et al. 1996), logistic networks (Landeghem and Bobeanu 2002), hybrid systems (Pettersson and Lennartson, 1995), biological systems (Kitakaze et al. 2005), and workflows (Aalst and Hee 2000; Lin et al. 2002) to mention only a few important examples. This wide spectrum of applications is accompanied by wide spectrum different aspects which have been considered in the research on Petri nets.
