In this paper, we consider discrete event systems divided in a main system and a secondary system such that the inner dynamics of each system is ruled by standard synchronizations and the interactions between both systems are expressed by partial synchronizations (i.e. event e(2) can only occur when, not after, event e(1) occurs) of events in the secondary system by events in the main system. The main contribution consists in adapting model predictive control, developed in the literature for (max, +)-linear systems, to the considered class of systems. This problem is solved under the condition that the performance of the main system is never degraded to improve the performance of the secondary system. Then, the optimal input is selected to respect the output reference and the remaining degrees of freedom are used to ensure just-in-time behavior. The unconstrained problem is solved in linear time with respect to the length of the prediction horizon. (C) 2016 Published by Elsevier Ltd.