Specifying The Just - In - Time Kanban System Using TwoObject - Oriented Modelling

Modelling by means of speciication languages is increasingly being recognised as an important phase in system development. It encourages one to think about problems using models organised around real-world situations. The system to be developed should then be consistent, correct and unambiguous with respect to the models produced. The Just-In-Time kanban system is an example of a real-world problem with a multiple-supplier and multiple-client architecture. The purpose of this paper is to use two speciication languages proposed in the literature to model the kanban system. The languages used are LOOPN (Lakos 1991) and Object-Z (Duke, King, Rose, and Smith 1991a). The case study focuses on describing the kanban system in the diierent notations, and thus investigating how well they can express the Just-In-Time system. The kanban system consists of many replicated components, each having the same state space and exhibiting the same behaviour. To describe each and every component in the system would be repetitious and tedious. The ease of describing such a system is discussed in the paper.