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Keywords: project planning, decision support, discrete event simulation.
A process-oriented simulation approach to project management is proposed which gives realistic statistical information about total project data and about individual activities as a function of contractual completion-time. The proposed method provides the possibility to define a generic activity network, which is simulated. The activities in the network may have any statistical or tabulated completion-time distribution. A project simulation run consists of a large number of sub-runs each simulating a project realisation. A run provides statistical information with respect to project completion-times, individual activities such as the probability of activities being critical and excess probability of contract time, and information for monitoring contract critical activities during project realisation. A case of aircraft maintenance is elaborated in which the model is used to reduce the number of contract time excesses using a simple rule assigning extra capacity to activities. The rule is based on preliminary analyses and information that is obtained during the project progress.