Extended simple colored Petri nets: a tool for plant simulation

Extended simple colored Petri nets (ESCP-nets) are a new class of high-level Petri nets conceived as a good trade-off between Petri nets (P-nets) and colored Petri nets (CP-nets), to be used in plant simulation. ESCP-nets, while being much more convenient and compact than P-nets, are simpler than CP-nets, thus being more easily implemented and more amenable to formal analysis. Furthermore, they possess some features particularly well-suited to plant simulation. The successful employment of ESCP-nets in an industrial application has confirmed their validity.