Semi-formal and Formal Models Applied to Flexible Manufacturing Systems

Flexible Manufacturing Systems (FMSs) are adopted to process different goods in different mix ratios allowing firms to react quickly and efficiently to changes in products and production targets (e.g. volumes, etc.). Due to their high costs, FMSs require careful design, and their performance must be precisely evaluated before final deployment. To support and guide the design phase, this paper presents a UML semi-formal model for FMSs that captures the most prominent aspects of these systems. For a deeper analysis, two refinements could then be derived from the UML intermediate description: simulation components for “empirical” analysis, and an abstract formal model that is suitable for formal verification. In this paper we focus on the latter, based on the TRIO temporal logic. In particular, we hint at a methodology to derive TRIO representations from the corresponding UML descriptions, and apply it to the case of FMSs. A subset of the resulting formal model is then used to verify, through logic deduction, a simple property of the FMS.