A Deadlock Prevention Policy for FMS Based on Time Constraints
Jinwei Guo
School of Electro-Mechanical Engineering
Xidian University
No.2 South Taibai Road, Xi’an 710071, China
Email: jw guo525@126.com
Abstract— To solve the problem of deadlock for flexible
manufacturing systems (FMS), an effective deadlock prevention
policy based on time constraints is presented in this paper.
The proposed approach is for a special class of Petri nets,
named S3 PR. Reachability analysis is a fundamental method
applied widely into analyzing Petri nets model. The deadlock-
freedom is achieved by preventing the system from reaching the
bad, deadlock markings and local isolated loops (LIL). By time
constraints, the firing sequences of transitions are restricted
to avoid the system entering the forbidden states. Compared
with the traditional deadlock control policies, the controlled
net by the presented method has simpler structure. Finally, an
example is used to demonstrate the applications of the proposed
approach.
KeyWords-Petri nets; deadlock prevention; flexible man-
ufacturing system; time constraints
I. I NTRODUCTION
The flexible manufacturing systems (FMS), consisting of
the uniform information system, material storage and trans-
portation system and a set of numerical control processing
equipments, is a kind of automated manufacturing systems.
The introduction of FMS is intended to tackle the balance
problems between the efficiency and the flexibility of highly
automated manufacturing systems, especially, in the small
batch manufacturing. However, in the practical producing
activities, the existences of insufficient system resources,
inappropriate processing sequences and improper resource
allocations can lead to the competition for resources and
result in deadlock which is an undesirable situation.
Petri nets, a graphical and mathematical modeling tool,
have been widely used to model flexible manufacturing
systems. In general, within the Petri net formalism, there
are mainly three methods to handle deadlocks in FMS:
deadlock detection and recovery [1] [2], deadlock avoid-
ance [3] [4] and deadlock prevention [5] [6] [7] [8] [9].
The deadlock detection and recovery approach is to cope
with the system when a deadlock occurs. It permits the
occurrence of deadlocks. An effective recovery mechanism
can be initialized to tackle the undesirable situation once a
deadlock is detected. The deadlock avoidance approach is
an on-line control strategy aiming to avoid the occurrence
of undesirable states by imposing some constraints on the
system before the forthcoming deadlock. Compared with
____________________________________
978-1-4799-- /14/$31.00 ©2014 IEEE
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Jingyang Fan
School of Electro-Mechanical Engineering
Xidian University
No.2 South Taibai Road, Xi’an 710071, China
Email: fan edu@126.com
the two approaches aforementioned, the deadlock prevention
strategies require no run-time cost, since problems are solved
in the system design and planning stages either by effective
system design or by using an off-line mechanism to control
the requests for resources to ensure that deadlocks never
occur. Because of the advantage of the deadlock prevention
over the deadlock detection and recovery and deadlock
avoidance, many scholars have made a great deal of research
on the deadlock prevention and obtained many achievements
over the last two decades. A comprehensive survey and
comparison of Petri net-based deadlock prevention policies
for FMS can be found in [10]. From the recent literatures, in
summary, the main three approaches to deadlock prevention
are siphon-based [5] [11], reachability graph-based [12] [13]
and hybrid approaches which combine the theory of regions
and siphon-based control methods [9].
In this paper, we propose a novel deadlock prevention
strategy based on time constraints for FMS. First of all, for
the given Petri net model of an FMS which exists deadlocks,
its reachability graph is computed. All the reachable states
are classified into dead, bad, dangerous and good markings.
The bad markings are defined as the states that inevitably
enter into the deadlock or local isolated loops (LIL). By
contrast, from a dangerous marking, the system can possibly
enter into dead markings. This study aims to control the firing
sequence by adding proper time constraints to the transitions.
With the time constraints, the firing priorities of enabled tran-
sitions can be controlled to ensure the deadlocks never occur.
The introducing of time Petri nets [14] makes the control
strategy here different from traditional reachability graph-
based methods. The controlled net has simpler structure.
The rest of the study is organized as follows. Section II
reviews the basics of Petri nets (PN) and Time Petri nets
(TPN), including the definitions and properties. A subclass
of Petri nets, named S3 PR, is also introduced in this section.
Section III provides the control strategy in detail. A flexible
manufacturing example is given in Section IV. Section V
presents the conclusions and discussions.

 II. P RELIMINARIES
A. Basics of Petri nets
A Petri net [8] is a four-tuple N = (P, T, F, W ) where P
and T are finite and nonempty sets. P is a set of places and
T is a set of transitions with P ∪ T = ∅ and P ∩ T = ∅.
F ⊆ (P × T ) ∪ (T × P ) is called a flow relation of the net,
represented by arcs with arrows from places to transitions or
from transitions to places. W : (P × T ) ∪ (T × P ) → N is a
mapping that assigns a weight to an arc: W (f ) > 0 if f ∈ F
and W (f ) = 0 otherwise, where N = {0, 1, 2, . . .} is the
set of nonnegative integers. N = (P, T, F, W ) is called an
ordinary net, denoted as N = (P, T, F ), if ∀f ∈ F, W (f ) =
1. If ∀t ∈ T, |• t| = |t• | = 1, the ordinary Petri net N =
(P, T, F ) is called a state machine.
A marking M of N is a mapping from P to N. (N, M0 )
is called a net system or marked net. For economy of space,

M (p)p is used to denote vector M . The preset of a
p∈P
node x ∈ P ∪ T is defined as • x = {y ∈ P ∪ T |(y, x) ∈ F }
and its postset is defined as x• = {y ∈ P ∪ T |(x, y) ∈ F }.
A transition t ∈ T is enabled at a marking M if ∀p ∈ • t,
M (p) ≥W (p, t). This fact is denoted as M [t. Firing t yields
a new marking M  such that ∀p ∈ P , M  (p) = M (p) −
W (p, t) + W (t, p), as denoted by M [tM  . M  is called
a reachable marking from M . Marking M  is said to be
reachable from M if there exists a sequence of transitions
σ = t0 t1 . . . tn and markings M1 , M2 , . . ., and Mn such that
M [t0 M1 [t1 M2 . . . Mn [tn M  holds. The set of markings
reachable from M in N is called the reachability set of Petri
net (N, M ) and denoted by R(N, M ). A transition t ∈ T is
live at M0 if ∀M ∈ R(N, M0 ), ∃M  ∈ R(N, M ),
M  [t. N = (PA ∪P 0 ∪PR , T, F ) resulting from the composition of
N is dead at M if  ∃t ∈ T ,
M [t. (N, M0 ) is deadlock- N1 and N2 via PC defined as follows: (1) PA = PA1 ∪ PA2 ,
free if ∀M ∈ R(N, M0 ), ∃t ∈ T ,
M [t. (N, M0 ) is live (2) P 0 = {P10 }∪{P20 }, (3) PR = PR1 ∪PR2 , (4) T = T1 ∪T2 ,
if ∀t ∈ T , t is live at M0 . (N, M0 ) is bounded if ∃k ∈ N,
∀M ∈ R(N, M0 ), ∀p ∈ P ,
M (p) ≤ k. ∀p ∈ P 0 , t ∈ p• is called a source transition. Unless
B. TPN
Time Petri nets [15] are classic Petri nets where each tran-
sition t is associated with a time interval [Ef t(t), Lf t(t)].
When t becomes enabled, it cannot fire before Ef t(t) time
units have elapsed, and it has to fire no later than Lf t(t) time
units after being enabled, unless it has meanwhile become
disabled by the firing of another transition. Here Ef t(t)
and Lf t(t) are relative to the moment when t just became
enabled. The time Ef t(t) is the earliest possible firing time
for t and is called earliest f iring time of t, and Lf t(t) is
the latest possible firing time for t and is called latest f iring
time of t. The firing of a transition itself does not take up any
time. The interval bounds are non-negative rational numbers
or ∞ in the case of Lf t(t) = ∞ while the time interval
itself is given in real numbers. Without loss of generality
we can require the interval bounds to be natural numbers.
Therefore, we consider interval bounds Ef t(t) and Lf t(t)
of a transition t as non-negative integers including zero such
that Ef t(t)  Lf t(t) or Lf t(t) = ∞.

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C. S 3 P R
The proposed supervisor design approach targets at sys-
tems that can be modeled by some classes of ordinary Petri
nets. This subsection introduces Systems of Simple Sequen-
tial Processes with Resources (S3 PR). It is an important
subclass of Petri nets proposed by Ezpeleta et al.[16] that
can model a typical class of resource allocation systems
and draws general interests from academic researchers and
industrial practitioners. It is defined as follows [8].
Definition 1: A simple sequential process (S2 P) is a Petri
net N = (PA ∪ {p0 }, T, F ) where (1) PA = ∅ is called the
set of operation places; (2) p0 ∈ PA is called the idle process
place; (3) N is a strongly connected state machine; (4) every
circuit of N contains place p0 .
Definition 2: A simple sequential process with resources
(S2 PR) is a Petri net N = ({p0 } ∪ PA ∪ PR , T, F ) such that:
1. The subnet generated by X = PA ∪ {p0 } ∪ T is an S2 P.
2. PR = ∅ and (PA ∪ {p0 }) ∩ PR = ∅.
3. ∀p ∈ PA , ∀t ∈ • p, ∀t ∈ p• , ∃rp ∈ PR ,• t ∩ PR =
•
t ∩ PR = {rp }.
4. The following statements are verified: (a) ∀r ∈ PR ,
••
r ∩ PA = r•• ∩ PA = ∅ and (b) ∀r ∈ PR ,• r ∩ r• = ∅.
5. •• (p0 ) ∩ PR = (p0 )•• ∩ PR = ∅.
Definition 3: A system of S2 PR, called S3 PR for short, is
defined recursively as follows:
1. An S2 PR is an S3 PR.
2. Let Ni = (PAi ∪ {Pi0 } ∪ PRi , Ti , Fi ), i ∈ {1, 2}, be
two S3 PR such that (PA1 ∪ {P10 }) ∩ (PA2 ∪ {P20 }) = ∅,
PR1 ∩ PR2 = PC = ∅, and T1 ∩ T2 = ∅. Then, the net
and (5) F = F1 ∪ F2 is also an S3 PR.
otherwise stated, only the S3 PR net which has an unique
source transition for each process is considered in this work.
Some researchers also defined this kind of Petri nets as
LS3 PR (linear S3 PR).
III. S UPERVISOR D ESIGN
The deadlock prevention approach presented here is based
on the theory of regions [17]. It is an important method
for supervisory control of discrete-event systems. First, the
reachability graph of a Petri net system is computed. In the
reachability graph, markings are generally categorized into
four classes in the sense of deadlock control: deadlock, bad,
dangerous, and good markings. A deadlock one is a dead
system state by which no successive marking is followed. A
bad marking is defined as the one that inevitably enters into
the deadlock or local isolated loops. A dangerous marking
is the one that one or some (but not all) of its son nodes
are either bad or deadlock ones. Good markings are the
markings except deadlock, bad, and dangerous ones. Good
and dangerous markings are included in the maximal strongly
  
transition sequences rather than markings or states. As shown

  in [18] [19], an enabled transition t is said to be schedulable
under marking M if t can fire before any other transitions
 

enabled simultaneously. Generally, the schedulability of an
     
individual transition depends on the time constraints of all
 
enabled transitions under the current marking. Transition
 t is schedulable under the initial marking M0 if Ef t(t)
 
≤ min{Lf t(t ): t is enabled under M0 }. According to
  the statements on schedulable transitions, two definitions are
3
given as follows.
Figure 1. An S PR model. Definition 4: ∀ti , tj ∈ T , ti , tj are enabled simultaneous-
ly, i, j ∈ N, ti is weakly schedulable if Ef t(ti ) ≤ Lf t(tj ),
denoted by S(ti )  S(tj ).
M0

t4
t4 t1 t5 t8
t8 Definition 5: ∀ti , tj ∈ T , ti , tj are enabled simultaneous-
M 3 t2 M 1
t5
M4
t1
M2
t6
M5
ly, i, j ∈ N, ti is strongly schedulable if Lf t(ti ) < Ef t(tj ),
t4 t1 t3
t5
M8
t2 t6
M9
t1
t5 t8
denoted by S(ti ) > S(tj ).
t7
t5 t1 In Figure 3(a), both t1 and t2 in the conflict structure are
M 6 t3 M7 t1 t5 M 10 M 11
t1 t5 t7 weakly schedulable under the current marking, though the
t4 M 12 t2 M 13 M 14 t6 M 15 t8 firing of one transition makes the other disabled under the
M 16 M 17 new marking. In Figure 3(b), t1 is strongly schedulable, t2
t1 t5
M 18 M 19 is not schedulable because t1 fires doubtlessly ahead of t2
good marking
and t2 can never fire.
bad marking
Definition 6: A local isolated loop (LIL) is defined as
dangerous marking ti tj tk tl
follows. Let −→ Mi −→ Mj · · · −→ Mk −→
deadlock marking
Mi be a finite
Figure 2. The reachability graph of Figure 1. directed loop in the reachability graph of a Petri net where
arcs are labeled by transitions in T . The set of markings
among the loop is denoted as M. The loop is called an LIL,
connected components containing the initial marking M0 . if ∀M ∈ M, there does not exist a path from which the
They constitute the legal behavior of a system. initial marking M0 is reachable.
Figure 1 is an S3 PR Petri net model. Its reachability For example, Figure 4 is a part of the reachability graph
graph is shown in Figure 2. A reachability graph presents of a Petri net. In Figure 4, the loop constructed by M4 − M7
the complete dynamic behavior of a Petri net model. The is an LIL. Obviously, the existence of LILs makes a net’s
nodes denote the set of reachable states and the edges are liveness impossible.
labeled with firing transitions. Given a net system (N, M0 ),
all the reachable states can be divided into four types as M3 M0 M4 M5
t4 t6 t7
aforementioned: deadlock, bad, dangerous and good ones.
According to the theory of regions, dangerous and good t3 t1 t10 t8
t2 t9
markings constitute the legal behavior of a system. Hence,
M2 M1 M7 M6
in order to realize the liveness of a system, what one needs
to do is separating the deadlock and bad markings from
the reachability graph by adding time constraints to the Figure 4. A part of the reachability graph of a Petri net
transitions.
The concept of time schedulable is mainly concerned with By the analysis of all the possible conditions, the classes of
structures related to deadlocks and LILs in the reachability
graph are presented in Figure 5 and Figure 6. As known,
  according to the theory of regions, dangerous and good
markings constitute the legal behavior of a system. To obtain
       
 the supervisor of a Petri net, deadlock, bad markings and
    LILs must be forbidden. Based on time constraints, such
purposes can be achieved by setting proper firing intervals
for transitions. According to different conditions, a control
   
policy is developed as follows.
 
Algorithm - Deadlock prevention policy based on time
Figure 3. The time schedulability of transitions. constraints of transitions



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  Figure 6. The classes of the structures related to LILs in a

Figure 5. The classes of structures related to deadlocks in a reachability graph.
reachability graph.

end if
if it is covered by subclass II(d) as shown in Figure 6 then
Input: A marked Petri net (N, M0 ) with deadlock states
S(ti ) > S(tj ) ∩ S(ti ) > S(tk ).
Output: The controlled net with time constraints.
end if
Step 1: Compute the reachability graph of the given Petri net, Remove Lq from L.
denoted as RG(N, M0 ). End while
Step 2: Distinguish the sets of good, dangerous, bad, and deadlock Step 6:
markings, denoted by P1 , P2 , P3 , and P4 , respectively. According Add a control place pc with one token. Add arcs from pc to any
to the structural properties of the considered class of Petri nets, source transition t and from t•• to pc with unit weight.
there are three classes of structures related to deadlocks and two The supervisor is obtained.
classes of structures related to LILs. They are also divided into nine
subclasses (a)-(i) totally as shown in Figure 5 and four subclasses By the algorithm above, in Step 4, when the states meet
(a)-(d) that are shown in Figure 6. a dangerous marking whose son nodes may reach a good,
Step 3: In order to make the net live, dead, bad markings and bad, or deadlock one, we can separate the deadlock and
LILs should be removed. Aiming at different conditions, time bad markings by making the transitions, which lead to
constraints are imposed on transitions to make some transitions good markings, to be strongly schedulable. According to
strongly schedulable.
Step 4: the time constraints and scheduling, the undesired states can
While P3 ∪ P4 = ∅ do be forbidden to satisfy the deadlockfree request. For LILs,
Select an element Mq ∈ P3 ∪ P4 , q ∈ {1, 2, · · · , |P3 | + |P4 |} Step 5 can eliminate them by time scheduling. For some
if it is covered by subclass I(a) or I(b) or II(e) or II(f) as shown net models, Step 6 is not necessary. If the controlled net
in Figure 5 then is already live after Step 5, Step 6 should be neglected.
Let S(ti ) > S(tj ).
end if Actually, Step 6 comes at the expense of concurrency.
if it is covered by subclass I(c) or I(d) or II(g) as shown in Theorem 1: For an S3 PR net with an unique source tran-
Figure 5 then sition for each process, the controlled net by proposed Algo-
Keep ti and tj unchanged. rithm is live if its source transitions are weakly schedulable.
end if
if it is covered by subclass III(h) as shown in Figure 5 then IV. A N FMS EXAMPLE
Let S(ti ) > S(tj ) ∩ S(ti ) > S(tk ).
The flexible manufacturing cell shown in Figure 7 has
end if
if it is covered by subclass III(i) as shown in Figure 5 then two machines, two robots, three loading buffers and three
Let S(ti ) > S(tj ) ∪ S(tj ) > S(tk ). unloading buffers. Three part types are produced. The net
end if model is an S3 PR and contains deadlocks. It has 30 reach-
Remove Mq from P3 ∪ P4 able markings including two deadlock markings, three bad
End while markings, ten dangerous markings and an LIL. Their detailed
Step 5:
The set of LILs is denoted as L. classifications can be seen from Table I.
While L = ∅ do Furthermore, it is needed to determine all the possible
Select an element Lq ∈ L, q ∈ {1, 2, · · · , |L|}. conditions to separate the the deadlock, bad markings and
if it is covered by subclass I(a) or I(b) as shown in Figure 6 LIL. As shown in Figure 8, Class I represents the conditions
then which may lead to deadlocks. From Class II, all the bad
Let S(ti ) > S(tj ).
end if markings can be found. Class III describes an LIL generated
if it is covered by subclass II(c) as shown in Figure 6 then from the net model. And it shows how to prevent the system
S(ti ) > S(tk ) ∪ S(tj ) > S(tk ). from entering into the LIL.



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 t12 No. I M 10 M 12 M 15 M 13
Class

p12 t7 t3 t7 t1 t11 t10 t8

p13 t2

p10 t11
M 17 M 20 M 21 M 17 M 23 M 17 M 21 M 22
t1
p11 M4 M6 M8
No. II
p14 Class
t10 p2
t6 t10 t2 t7 t1 t11 t7

t9 t2
M 10 M 10 M 12 M 13 M 10 M 14 M 15
p9 p3
M1 M5 M2

t8 t3
p15 p1 t10 t2 t6 t3 t6 t1 t11 t6
p4
p8
p6
M4 M5 M6 M 11 M 12 M4 M7 M8
t7 t4
p16 No. III M 11 M 18
Class
p7 P5
t10 t4 t6 t11 t4 t6
t6 t5
M 29 M 26
t11
M 18 M 19 M 20 M 24 M 25 M 26
3
Figure 7. An S PR example.
t12 t10 M 12 M 24

M 20
LIL t3 t7 t12 t4 t6

With the decomposed reachability graph in Figure 8,

the proposed method can be understood intuitively. Some M 20 M 21 M 11 M 28 M 29
transitions should be controlled to avoid the undesired states
by restricting their firing sequences. By the algorithm afore-
mentioned, the firing time constraints of transitions can be good dangerous bad deadlock LIL
determined as follows:
⎧ Figure 8. The reachability analysis of the net system.
⎪
⎪ S(t11 ) > S(t1 ).
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ S(t8 ) > S(t10 ) ∩ S(t8 ) > S(t2 ).
⎪
⎪
⎪
⎪ S(t 7 ) > S(t10 ) ∩ S(t7 ) > S(t2 ).
⎪
⎪ scheduling is realized. Moreover, considering the concurren-
⎪
⎪ S(t 11 ) > S(t1 ) ∪ S(t7 ) > S(t1 ).
⎨ cy and synchronization of S3 PR, it should be guaranteed that
S(t3 ) > S(t6 ).
(1) the source transitions of different manufacturing processes
⎪
⎪ S(t2 ) > S(t10 ) ∪ S(t6 ) > S(t10 ).
⎪
⎪ are weakly schedulable each other. Taking all the factors into
⎪
⎪ S(t11 ) > S(t1 ) ∪ S(t6 ) > S(t1 ).
⎪
⎪ account, we impose proper time constraints on transitions.
⎪
⎪ S(t4 ) > S(t6 ) ∪ S(t10 ) > S(t6 ).
⎪
⎪ And a group of the time constraints is determined as follows.
⎪
⎪ S(t4 ) > S(t6 ) ∪ S(t11 ) > S(t6 ).
⎩ The final supervisor is shown in Figure 9 and the controlled
S(t4 ) > S(t6 ) ∪ S(t12 ) > S(t6 ).
net is live.
According to the possible solutions to Eq.1, proper time t1 [3, 5] t2 [2, 3] t3 [0, 1] t4 [0, 1]
constraints can be added to the transitions such that time
t5 [0, 0] t6 [3, 5] t7 [0, 1] t8 [0, 1]
t9 [0, 0] t10 [4, 5] t11 [1, 2] t12 [0, 0]
TABLE I: Classifications of the reachable markings

classifications No. of reachability markings

dead M17 , M21 V. C ONCLUSIONS
bad M4 , M10 , M12 This paper focuses on the deadlock prevention for a class
dangerous M1 , M2 , M5 , M6 , M8 , M11 , M13 , of Petri nets. Traditional deadlock prevention methods need
M15 , M18 , M24 adding monitors to the original net system which makes the
good M0 , M3 , M7 , M9 , M14 , M16 , M19 , supervisor more complex. In real-world systems, traditional
M20 , M22 , M23 , M25 − M29 methods may bring exorbitant expenditure. The aim of this
LIL M20 , M26 , M29 research is to design the supervisor with simple structure.
First, the existence of deadlock and bad markings in a Petri



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This work is supported in part by the Natural Science systems using Time Petri nets”, IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man,
Foundation of China under Grant No. 61403295, the Fun- and Cybernetics-Part B, vol.30, no.5, pp.725-736, 2000.
damental Research Funds for the Central Universities under
Grant No. JB140416 and 7214468806, and Provincial Nat-
ural Science and Fundamental Research Funds of Shannxi
Province, China under Grant No. 2012JM8038.



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