ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the importance of flexibility in manufacturing systems and the necessity to develop decision support tools to transform manufacturing flexibility into a competitive advantage tool. It overviews the quantitative methods for performance evaluation followed by the description of the CPN formalism to support the state space analysis as a quantitative tool to deal with the best use of timed flexibility degrees. State space analysis can be seen as a powerful method for evaluating the performance of manufacturing systems. It permits the exploration of a wide range of candidate solutions, which leads to better decision making. Based on Petri net (PN) formalism, this method supports the cause–effect analysis via generating and evaluating all possible system states. State space–based performance analysis requires generation of timed state space. In the definition of the holding durations (HD)-based firing rule of a coloured timed Petri net (CTPN), the enabled transition is described as a transition that can fire.