Design and implementation of an automatic material handling system using Petri nets

This paper presents the problem definition and the related research activities on the modeling, simulation, design and implementation of an automatic material handling system in a batch production environment. The colored and timed Petri nets are used to model and simulate the automatic material handling system. Petri net modeling and simulation enable the determination of the design parameters of an automatic guided vehicle and an automatic storage/retrieval system, and also the estimation of the expected performance capability of the whole system. Finally, the whole system has been implemented for a specific batch production line. The comparison of the performance capability expected by the Petri net simulation and that measured from the real-time running of the whole system shows good agreement.