Finding multiple possible critical paths using fuzzy PERT

Abstract

Program evaluation and review techniques (PERT) is an efficient tool for large project management. In actual project control decisions, PERT has successfully been applied to business management, industry production, project scheduling control, logistics support, etc. However, classical PERT requires a crisp duration time representation for each activity. This requirement is often difficult for the decision-makers due to the fact that they usually can not estimate these values precisely. In recent years, some fuzzy PERT methods have been proposed based on fuzzy set theory for project management. However, there is a drawback in the existing fuzzy PERT methods, i.e., sometimes they maybe cannot rind a critical path in a fuzzy project network. In this paper, we propose a fuzzy PERT algorithm to find multiple possible critical paths in a fuzzy project network, where the duration time of each activity in a fuzzy project network is represented by a fuzzy number. The proposed algorithm can overcome the drawback of the existing fuzzy PERT methods.