Bound Duration Theorem and DCPM Network Reduction

Decision critical path method (DCPM) is an extend method of CPM. The advantage of DCPM is that one network can provide a wide range of options to decision-maker. However, there exist plenty of decision activities in DCPM network, which make DCPM network very complex and hard to compute, which restricts its application in practice. Through the study we found that, there are only a part of decision points would affect the project duration among so many decision activities. So reduction of DCPM network is a feasible way of solving the problem. In this paper, we put forward notions such as bound duration, effective decision path and then we gave bound duration theorem, reduction theorem of non-decision path and reduction theorem of decision path. Based on those theorems, a method of reducing DCPM network was proposed. By the method DCPM network can be simplified to the greatest extent.