On Equivalency Between Numerical Process DSM and State-Space Representation

Nowadays, as more systems are regarded to be complex, the processes to develop them are becoming more complex too. This increasing trend makes more effective analysis methods inevitable necessities. Meanwhile, matriarchal tools are becoming the most prominent, this paper has tried to study a work transformation matrix (WTM) at the level of coupled blocks of activities (CBAs). The neighboring matrices of such a WTM act as its information flow interfaces with other activities. It is shown how these are equivalent to some state-space representation matrices. The equivalency helps us to improve the analysis method for a set of CBAs constituting the whole WTM. Additionally, the concepts of powers of adjacency matrices and elementary dynamic properties of process as a system in modern control theory are brought together to analyze the behavior of activities in coupled blocks. By analyzing these properties in a case study, five heuristic are derived and proposed for improving the process through better preference and ordering of activities. Effectiveness of these heuristics is tested by a simple discrete-time simulation for which results show 17% of time reduction for the case study.