A decision-making application for Project Management through Timed Coloured Petri Nets

Abstract

Traditional techniques for project modelling do not incorporate some factors that are essential for resource planning and management. This research aims at underlining the benefits of timed coloured Petri nets in the project management area and assist managers during the resource allocation activity in projects under constraints, commonly encountered in practice. The outcomes allow managers to have detailed knowledge of project development. Traditional information, such as the resources consumption, critical project path and the project cost baseline, are combined with untraditional information also derived by TCPNs. The project simulation can yield lots of information concerning the system performance for a better project scheduling and control since TCPNs provide a powerful formalism for representing and analysing parallel systems. The 'what if' analysis, during the project simulation, allows identifying critical behaviour and highlight discrepancies between what is planned and what is executing defining possible corrective actions.