An integrative simulation model for project management in chemical process engineering

Abstract

The planning of development projects significantly influences the costs created by the projects as well as the success of the development projects. However much potentials are actually wasted because of the inherent complexity unmanageable for project managers. Various methods and tools, from project modeling to the workflow management system, are used to handle this complexity and to develop these potentials, but the development of software solutions alone, however, is not sufficient. Instead, an extensive instrument consisting of methods, specification techniques and software tools for the integrated transformation and simulation of a graphical process model is needed. The presented approach shows a method for the modeling and simulation of development projects in process engineering based on Petri net simulation. The simulation of an example process displays the connections between different influencing parameters such as team configuration, the availability of needed tools, the variance in processing times, and the qualification of the persons involved. Selected mathematical relationships illustrate the interaction of these influencing parameters. It could hereby be determined which parameter combination is the best to achieve setted goals like with which amount of employed staff the shortest development time can be attained. In the outlook several additional parameters are named that will be added in order to make further detailed analyses possible in a future research project. © 2009 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.