An approach to model and evaluate innovation and concurrent engineering projects

The modeling and analysis of a project are today mostly developed with the PERT/CPM techniques. Although these tools are well-suited to model simple projects, they are not powerful enough for complex project planning which are related to miscarriage, choice and competition, such as design projects and research projects. The goal of this paper is to propose a generalized approach for complex project modeling. The authors try to take into account the tasks for which the planning depends on the context, the tasks for which a miscarriage does not disturb the project realization, and the tasks which are in competition and may be processed simultaneously to reach the same goal. This approach is based first on the basic concepts of the PERT/CPM methods such as tasks, precedence relations, hierarchy; and second on the representation of knowledge systems such as tasks with several possible decompositions and tasks associated with a planning system, a reaction system and a synthesis system. The authors define after these guide lines, a precise typology of tasks in regard to a complex project management. Finally, the authors present calculation methods which are available for such a model