Fuzzy based method for project planning of the infrastructure design for the diagnostic in ITER

The long-term design projects need special preparation before the start of the execution. This preparation usually includes the drawing of the network diagram for the whole procedure. This diagram includes the time estimation of the individual subtasks and gives us information about the predicted dates of the milestones. The calculated critical path in this network characterizes a specific design project concerning to its duration very well. Several methods are available to support this step of preparation. This paper describes a new method to map the structure of the design process and clarify the milestones and predict the dates of these milestones. The method is based on the PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Technique) network but as a novelty it applies fuzzy logic to find out the concerning times in this graph. With the application of the fuzzy logic the handling of the different kinds of design uncertainties becomes feasible. Many kinds of design uncertainties exist from the possible electric blackout up to the illness of an engineer. In many cases these uncertainties are related with human errors and described with linguistic expressions. The fuzzy logic enables to transform these ambiguous expressions into numeric values for further mathematical evaluation. The method is introduced in the planning of the design project of the infrastructure for the diagnostic systems of ITER. The method not only helps the project in the planning phase, but it will be a powerful tool in mathematical modeling and monitoring of the project execution. (C) 2013 Published by Elsevier B.V.