Project management-critical path method (CPM) and PERT simulated with ProcessModel

Author

Simmons, LeRoy F.

Author_Institution

Inf. Syst. & Operations Manage., Loyola Coll., Baltimore, MD, USA

Volume

2

fYear

2002

fDate

8-11 Dec. 2002

Firstpage

1786

Abstract

ProcessModel simulation allows the activity times of a project to be represented by a variety of distributions and further the resulting project time may also be represented by a variety of distributions. This is a significant improvement over the traditional methods of CPM and PERT. Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) takes the CPM network and adds distributions to represent the activity times of the project. CPM assumes the activity times to be constant, which is not likely in the real world. PERT assumes the activity times of the project to be distributed as Beta distributions and the resulting project time to be a Normal distribution. This is better than assuming them to be constant, but these assumptions are needlessly restrictive. This paper demonstrates how simulation with ProcessModel can remove these needless restrictions.

Keywords

PERT; critical path analysis; project management; CPM network; PERT; ProcessModel simulation; Program Evaluation and Review Technique; activity times; beta distributions; critical path method; distributions; normal distribution; project management; project time; Computational modeling; Computer simulation; Delay; Educational institutions; Gaussian distribution; Management information systems; Project management; Prototypes; Testing; Virtual prototyping;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Simulation Conference, 2002. Proceedings of the Winter

Print_ISBN

0-7803-7614-5

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/WSC.2002.1166468

Filename

1166468