Timed Coloured Petri Nets for Modelling and Managing Processes and Projects

Abstract The Resource Constrained Scheduling Project (RCSP) is one of the most complex tasks in the sector of project management. Many researchers devoted effort during the last years to solve this criticality. Moreover, interesting studies analyse the problem regarding mathematical formulation. In so doing, the exact and/or heuristic solutions tools allow extending the analysis to a broad range of Operation Management problems. The proposed article describes a new approach for project/process modelling based on Timed Coloured Petri Nets (TCPNs), to simplify the resource allocation in a resource-constrained problem. In particular, its utilisation provides a robust formalism to represent and analyse parallel systems. The TCPNs utilisation allows analysing interdependencies, criticality, substitution, conflicting resource priorities and variations in the availability of resources. This paper proposes a new model and highlights the usefulness of the model for real-time activity scheduling in a resource-constrained project environment. A case study for an industrial project is described to provide a systematic analysis of the proposed tool.