A meta-model for actor-oriented, person-centered simulation for the management of development projects

The simulation of work organizations in product development projects currently occurs almost entirely in a task and process-based manner, whereas the workers involved are only considered in an undifferentiated manner. The intended use of these approaches is the optimization of project progressions to minimize the project duration and cost. Although simulation models for project organizations exist, an optimal course of a project is often not achieved in reality. Therefore, a simulation model is presented to identify realistic courses of product development projects by taking the workers in the center of consideration. Thus the workers become the active part in the simulation model and the specific models of the involved actors generate the dynamics of the model. The novel approach considers the large scope of decision making for the workers involved in the project. The simulation model is based on a formal description of the elements and their relationships in the form of a meta-model, which is presented in a restricted selection. A verification study serves for the depiction of the closeness of the central model component, the prioritization algorithm, to reality.