Scheduling of Discrete Event Systems Using Mixed Integer Linear Programming

Paper i proceeding, 2006

To remain competitive, the modern industry strive for flexibility. Recently, a method for automatic generation of control code from a 3D simulation model of a flexible manufacturing system was developed. Finite automata and Supervisory Control Theory (SCT) was used to guarantee the required behaviour of the system. This paper moves one step further. A method for automatic conversion between deterministic finite automata and Mixed Integer Linear Programming (MILP) formulation is presented. This allows to efficiently combine SCT and MILP to automatically generate time-optimal, collision-free and non-blocking working schedules.