Approach to Incremental Modelling of Web Services Orchestration - An Application to Deadlock-free Scheduling in Automated Systems

Abstract

Changes in equipment and production demand cannot be predicted at the design stage. Therefore decision‐taking mechanisms must rely on real‐time information collected from the shop floor.

Real time information‐based logistics decision taking mechanisms rely on dispatching rules. The usage of such regulations suffers from the myopia problem (it is not clear how to ensure that individual interests do not clash against the system‐wide objectives - e.g. total profit maximization). In order to overcome this, routing strategies must be based on formal representations of flow that automatically account for modifications in the values of parameters of interest and in the model itself.

This thesis addresses this problem and proposes a method to incrementally model the flow within a service‐oriented manufacturing line: based on information offered as a Web Service to the outside world, formal models of flow may be automatically created. The resulting representation assists deadlock‐free dynamic scheduling of the system.