Hierarchical Derivation of Schedules for Manufacturing Cells

An approach to systematic derivation of schedules for manufacturing cells is presented. The approach is based on model refinements in which simple model elements are replaced by more detailed submodels. For manufacturing cells, the refinements are used to introduce additional machines into a cell. The hierarchy of schedules is derived starting from a very simple cell, and increasing the complexity of schedules in consecutive steps. Timed Petri nets are used to represent the schedules and the refinements of model