Design optimization of the Petri net-based production process supported by additive manufacturing technologies

In the era of smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0, the rapid development of modelling in production processes results in the implementation of new techniques, such as additive manufacturing (AM) technologies. However, large investments in the devices in the field of AM technologies require prior analysis to identify the possibilities of improving the production process flow. This paper proposes a new approach to determine and optimize the production process flow with improvements made by the AM technologies through the application of the Petri net theory. The existing production process is specified by a Petri net model and optimized by AM technology. The modified version of the system is verified and validated by the set of analytic methods safeguarding against the formal errors, deadlocks, or unreachable states. The proposed idea is illustrated by an example of a real-life production process.