USE OF PETRI NETS FOR RESOURCE-ALLOCATION IN PROJECTS

Traditional models for project management have not adequately incorpor ated a number of factors that are important for resource allocation, T his paper describes the use of Petri nets to facilitate resource alloc ation in projects under some conditions commonly encountered in practi ce, Petri nets provide a powerful formalism for representing and analy zing concurrent systems. To date, however, very little has been done t o integrate this graphical and mathematical tool with the area of proj ect management, Petri net models can be used to analyze interdependenc ies, criticality, substitution, conflicting resource priorities, and v ariations in the availability of resources, This paper proposes a new model and demonstrates the usefulness of the model for real-time activ ity scheduling in a resource-constrained project environment. The mode l has been computerized using C language, and a simple project is chos en as an example to provide step-by-step explanations of the simulatio n carried out, This paper also discusses the implications of the model and the analysis it supports.