A class of Petri nets with a convex reachability set

A class of place/transition nets, called elementary composed state machine nets, is defined. The most interesting property of this class of nets is that the set of reachable markings is an integer convex set. Following the authors' approach, the linear inequalities that define the reachability set can compute from the analysis of the simple state machine modules that compose the net. Thus all properties that can be expressed in terms of reachability of a given marking can be analyzed by integer programming techniques.<<ETX>>