A Workflow Model Based on Recursive Petri Nets for Flexible Manufacturing Processes

Recently, due to integration requirements, manufacturing industry is faced with the problem of controlling, monitoring, optimizing and supporting business and production processes. Among methods and techniques dealing with workflow management, those allowing a correct flexibility description are the more suitable for this industrial context. The aim of this paper is to show the interest of our model, namely recursive ECATNets (RECATNets), in the modeling of flexible workflow systems for manufacturing process automation. Recursive ECATNets are a sound combination of ECATNets (Extended Concurrent Algebraic Term Nets) and recursive Petri nets. The semantics of RECATNets is expressed in the conditional rewriting logic framework. Rewriting logic is a true concurrency and operational semantics that allows rapid prototyping using rewriting techniques and the system Maude in particular.