Deadlock avoidance policies for resource allocation systems with applications to FMS

The problem of deadlock avoidance for a class of resource allocation systems (RAS) called the single-unit RAS (SU-RAS) is discussed with particular application to buffer space allocation in a flexible manufacturing system. For a class of SU-RAS, it is shown that the problem of obtaining the maximally permissive deadlock avoidance policy is of polynomial complexity. Sub-optimal policies (which are not maximally permissive) for SU-RAS are also discussed.