An architecture for flexible manufacturing cells with alternate machining and alternate sequencing

One of the characteristics of flexible manufacturing systems (FMSs) is that they can consider multiple part routing due to alternate machining and alternate sequencing in the processing of parts. This paper presents a new architecture based on colored Petri nets (CPNs) that allows the supervisory controller of a flexible manufacturing cell to consider alternate machining and alternate sequencing in real time control of the cell. This capability for real time alternate routing is an extension of prior research on the application of CPN to modeling FMSs.