Timed coloured petri nets and project management applications

Traditional techniques for project modelling have not adequately incorporated some factors that are essential for resource planning and management. This paper describes a new approach for project modelling that uses Timed Coloured Petri nets (TCPNs), to facilitate resource allocation in projects under constraints, commonly encountered in practice since TCPNs provide a powerful formalism for representing and analysing parallel systems. However, up to now, very little has been done to integrate this graphical and mathematical tool with the area of project management. TCPN models can be used to analyse interdependencies, criticality, substitution, conflicting resource priorities and variations in the availability of resources. This paper proposes a new model, demonstrating its usefulness for real-Time activity scheduling in a resource-constrained project environment. The analysed case study regards the construction of an Italian highway.