Abstract: Information-theoretic modeling of manufacturing systems promotes the development of measures of the state information of manufacturing systems. Based on analyzing the dissipative structure characteristics of manufacturing systems, dissipative structure models of manufacturing systems are built by using the cusp catastrophe model in catastrophic theory and according to the mutual relationship between its control variable and state variable. The models make it possible to quantitatively judge the state when manufacturing systems come into being a dissipative structure. According to the definition of the information entropy of manufacturing systems, the model of expected entropy change and the model of actual entropy change are respectively built up and the objective that the states of manufacturing systems are exactly assessed is achieved. In empirical study, a manufacturing system of a workshop is taken as example to estimate whether its dissipative structure is formed under two different states. As a result, this quantificational way is well validated and an effective channel is provided for the optimization of manufacturing systems.

Key words: Catastrophic theory, Dissipative structure, Entropy change, Manufacturing systems