Resource allocation in large man-machine organizations

The authors present an algorithm to map processes onto organizations. The organization consists of resources and communication links that must be used to complete all the processes. The objective is to minimize the completion time of the terminal process without violating the constraints which are defined in terms of the requirements of the processes and the capabilities of the resources. The organization performing the processes, with the process mapping specified by the algorithm, is then simulated using Petri nets. The simulation model can be generated automatically from the definition of the organizational structure and the solution of the process mapping problem. Then simulations can be performed to examine the sensitivity of the overall performance to changes in the parameters of the mission and of the organization