Using Interval Constrained Petri Nets for Reactive Control Design: A tobacco manufacturing application

In many industrial sectors, such as the chemical industry, weight measures are used in order to control the quantity of consumed raw material. This parameter also takes a fundamental part in the product quality, as the correct transformation process is based upon a given percentage of each essence. Thus, weight regulation increases the global productivity of the system by decreasing the quantity of rejected products. This paper presents an approach based on a new modelling tool: the Interval Constrained Petri Nets. This tool is introduced in order to extend some properties of p-time PN to nontemporal constraints. A robust static weight setting in a tobacco fabric is presented as an application on a real workshop, using real production data. Then, a reactive control, facing the variations in input quality, provides a significant improvement in the quality of the final production.