Fast Verification of Petri Net-Based Model of Industrial Decision-Making Systems: A Case Study

This work deals with the verification of a decision-making system for additive manufacturing (AM) technology adoption specified by a Petri net. An innovative verification technique of a Petri net-based system is oriented toward practical applications, and can detect errors at the early design and modelling stage. The idea is illustrated by a real-life case study of supporting decision making in AM technology adoption affecting supply chain management (SCM). Two main issues are addressed. Firstly, making optimal decisions about AM technology requires models rarely possessed within a company. Therefore, this work proposes a model supporting the decision making related to the implementation of AM technology, based on a Petri net, by utilizing its main advantages: graphical modelling, and strong mathematical support of formal verification techniques. Contrary to the most popular analysis methods (which are bounded exponentially in a general case), it is proved that the presented method is bounded by a cubic polynomial with net size. Secondly, an investment in AM technology is often financially assessed and does not affect other processes, as in our SCM case. Hence, strong connectivity within the proposed Petri net-based model is examined.