Modelling and Analysis of Supply Chains using Product Time Petri Nets

TL;DR

This paper introduces a modular approach using Product Time Petri Nets to model and analyze the timing and resource constraints in supply chains, highlighting the impact of managerial capacity on system feasibility.

Contribution

It presents a novel modular modeling framework with explicit resource representation, enabling systematic analysis of supply chain timing and coordination policies.

Findings

Timing constraints and managerial capacity significantly affect system feasibility.

Configurations can lead to successful execution, timeouts, or timelocks.

The approach supports systematic what-if analysis of supply chain policies.

Abstract

Supply chains involve geographically distributed manufacturing and assembly sites that must be coordinated under strict timing and resource constraints. While many existing approaches rely on Colored Petri Nets to model material flows, this work focuses on the temporal feasibility of supply chain processes. We propose a modular modelling approach based on Product Time Petri Nets (PTPNs), where each subsystem is represented independently and the global behaviour emerges through synchronised transition labels. A key feature of the model is the explicit representation of the supply chain manager as a critical shared and mobile resource, whose availability directly impacts system feasibility. We analyse how timing constraints and managerial capacity influence the system behaviour, identifying configurations that lead to successful executions, timeouts, or timelocks induced by incompatible timing constraints. This approach enables systematic what-if analysis of supply chain coordination policies and demonstrates the relevance of PTPNs for modelling and analysing synchronised timed systems.