Aims and scope

The interdisciplinary field of Discrete Event Systems combines different formalisms, methodologies and tools from control, computer science and operations research. The research activity in this field is driven by the needs of many different applications domains: manufacturing, process control, supervisory systems, software engineering, transportation, and so on. Discrete Event Systems is now a mature field and many interesting applications have been developed.

The Workshop on Discrete Event Systems will be organised for the 7th time in Reims, France, following earlier successful meetings in Prague (1992), Antibes (1994), Edinburgh (1996), Cagliari (1998), Ghent (2000) and Zaragoza (2002). It aims to provide researchers from different fields (control theoreticians and control engineers, software engineers and computer scientists, operations research specialists) with an opportunity to exchange information and new ideas, and to discuss new developments in the field of DES. Both theory and applications will be discussed. It is envisaged that areas of interaction between different methodologies and tools will be further explored and common applications will be considered with focus on analysis and design of supervisory controllers as well as design techniques and implementation for emerging new applications.

Topics

The workshop will cover all topics in discrete event theory and applications, including (but not limited to) the following:

• Formalisms and modelling methodologies: Petri nets, state automata, statecharts, process algebras, max/plus-algebra ...
• Control of discrete-event systems with emphasis on supervisory control and on real time control
• Performance evaluation, diagnosis, optimisation, implementation and scheduling
• Discrete approaches of hybrid systems and reactive systems
• Applications including manufacturing systems, transportation systems, process control, distributed systems, software engineering, office automation, workflow, protocols ...
• Emerging applications in telecommunication systems and related fields: performance evaluation, on-line control ...