Priced discrete Automata for modeling energy efficient manufacturing systems

Cost optimization is a main concern of the industry nowadays and reducing the total energy input is one of the main ways to achieve it. Modeling through discrete event systems is a powerful tool to model complex human made systems often encountered in the manufacturing and model checkers offer a framework for the evaluation and optimization of such systems. A formalism is presented in the present paper to define a discrete version of Priced Timed Automata in the model checker PRISM by using an extension to discrete automata. Priced Timed Automata have been introduced as a formal way to study real time continuous systems. However, PRISM is a tool conceived for discrete automata but cannot handle the continuous priced automata directly due to its high restrictions in using the clock variables. The presented formalism offers an approach of modelling that gets around these restrictions.