Performance evaluation from stochastic statecharts representation of flexible reactive systems:a simulation approach

This paper focuses on the performance analysis of flexible reactive systems. The performance analysis consists of two phases： first system modeling, second performance evalua-tion. The paper models the flexible reactive system by the stochas-tic statecharts method, and uses the simulation method to evalu-ate the performance. To make use of the feature of event-triggered state transitions in the statecharts, a new method of simulation is proposed based on the techniques of the discrete-event system simulation. The new method solves the problem of computer imple-mentation of stochastic events, probabilistic transition, concurrent states, paral el actions, and broadcast communication mechanism in the stochastic statecharts. An example of a flexible manufactur-ing system is presented. The simulation result of the example is consistent with the analytical result, which shows the feasibility of the proposed new simulation method.