Abstract
Project critical path is one of basic notions in project management, known for many years already. Its determination is straightforward and unambiguous in case of crisp activity durations, but the problem becomes more complex when the activity durations are not known precisely and given in the form of fuzzy numbers. Numerous approaches have been proposed for the determination of the critical path in case of fuzzy activity durations. In this paper the case of activity durations given in the form of Z-fuzzy numbers will be considered for the first time. The application of Z-fuzzy numbers allows to model the credibility degree of estimations. This problem (taking into account estimators who are optimistic, pessimistic, volatile or accurate) will be analyzed and a concept and method of determining the critical path based on Z-fuzzy durations proposed. The critical path determined thanks to our approach will take into account not only the lack of “hard” information, but also human features of people involved in the estimation. The result will be thus more realistic and more useful in practical applications.
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Acknowledgements
This research was supported by the National Science Centre (Poland), under Grant 394311, 2017/27/B/HS4/01881: “Selected methods supporting project management, taking into consideration various stakeholder groups and using type-2 fuzzy numbers”.
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Marchwicka, E., Kuchta, D. (2022). Critical Path Method for Z-fuzzy Numbers. In: Kahraman, C., Cebi, S., Cevik Onar, S., Oztaysi, B., Tolga, A.C., Sari, I.U. (eds) Intelligent and Fuzzy Techniques for Emerging Conditions and Digital Transformation. INFUS 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 308. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-85577-2_100
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