Delays in Acyclical Distributed Decisionmaking Organizations

Abstract Distributed decisionmaking organizations with synchronous protocols are represented using Petri nets. An algorithm for computing time delays is developed. Starting with a matrix representation of the organizational structure, all possible information processing paths are scanned and the time delay associated with each one is computed. When the decision strategies are known, the expected delay of the overall system can be obtained. An alternative formulation based on the flow matrix description of the Petri net is also presented.