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Networking Basic Components: Merge and Burst Events: It Is Necessary For An Event To Be The Ending Event of Only One

Networking involves two basic components - events/nodes and activities. Events mark the beginning and end of activities, which are represented by arrows connecting events. There are different types of events like merge, burst, and dummy activities which have no time or resource consumption. Critical path analysis identifies the longest path of critical activities that determine the minimum time to complete a project. It involves calculating earliest and latest start/finish times to find floats and determine critical paths and activities. The critical path cannot be delayed without delaying the entire project.

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222 views7 pages

Networking Basic Components: Merge and Burst Events: It Is Necessary For An Event To Be The Ending Event of Only One

Networking involves two basic components - events/nodes and activities. Events mark the beginning and end of activities, which are represented by arrows connecting events. There are different types of events like merge, burst, and dummy activities which have no time or resource consumption. Critical path analysis identifies the longest path of critical activities that determine the minimum time to complete a project. It involves calculating earliest and latest start/finish times to find floats and determine critical paths and activities. The critical path cannot be delayed without delaying the entire project.

Uploaded by

vanvun
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NETWORKING

Basic Components
There are two basic components in network. These are
(i) Event/ Node (ii) Activity
Event/Node : A node/event is a particular instant in time showing the end or beginning
of one or more activities. It is a point of accomplishment or decision. The starting and end
points of an activitiy are thus described by two events usually known as the tail event and
head event respectively. An event is generally represented by a circle, rectangle, hexagon
or some other geometric shapes. These geometric shapes ae numbered for
distinguishing an activity from antoher one. The occurance of an event indicates that the
work has been accomplished upto that point.

Merge and burst events : It is necessary for an event to be the ending event of only one
activity but can be the ending event of two or more activities. Such event is defined as
merge event. If the event happens to be the beginning event of two or more activities it is
defined as a burst event.
Activity : An activity is a task or item of work to be done that consumes time, effort,
money or other resources. Activities are represented by arrows. Activities are identified
by the numbers of their starting (tail) event and ending (head) event. Generally, an
ordered pair (i, j) represents an activity where and events i and j represent the starting
and ending of the activity respectively. Activities are also denoted by capital alphabets.

The activities can be further classified into different categories;


(i) Predecessor activity : An activity which must be completed before one or more other
activities stsart is known as predecessor activity.
(ii) Successor activity : An activity which started immediately after one or more of other
activities are completed is known as successor activity.
(iii) Dummy activity : In connecting events by activities showing their inter dependencies,
very often a situation arises where a certain event j can not occur until another event i
has taken place but, the activity connecting i and j does not involve any time or
expenditure of toehr resources. In such a case, the activity is called the dummy activity.
It is depicted by dotted line in the network diagram.

Let us consider the example of a car taken to a garage for cleaning. Inside as well as
outside of the car is to be cleaned before it is taken away from thegarage. The events can
be put doen as follows :
Event 1 : Start the car from house
2 : Park the car in garage
3 : Compete outside cleaning
4 : Compete inside cleaning
5 : Take car from garage
6 : Park the car in house

It is assumed that inside cleaning and outside cleaning can be done concurrently by two
assistants of the garage. Activities B and C represent these cleaning operations. What do
activities D and E stand for? Their time consumpotions are zero but ehey express the
condition that events 3 and 4 must occur before the event 5 can take place. Activities D
and E are called the dummy activities.

Network : It is the graphic representation of logically and sequentially connected arrows


and nodes representing activities and events of a project. Networks are also called arrow
diagram.
Path : An unbroken chain of activity arrows connecting the initial event to some other
event is called a path.
Critical Path Analysis
Once the network of a project is constructed, the time analysis of the network becomes
essential for planning various activities of the project. The main objective of the time
analysis is to prepare a planning schedule of the project. The planning schedule should
include the following factors :
(i) Total completion time for the prohject.
(ii) Earliest time when each activity can start.
(iii) Latest time when each activity can be started without delaying the total project.
(iv) Float for each activity i.e. the duration of time by which the completion of an activity
can be delayed without delaying the total project completion.
(v) Identification of critical activities and critical path.
Notations : The following notations are used in this analysis.
Ei = Earliest occurance time of event i i.e., it is the earliest time at which the event i can
occur without affecting the total project duration.
Li = Latest allowable occurance time of event i. It is the latest allowable time at which an
event can occur without affecting the total project duration.
tij = Duration of activity (i, j)
ESij = Earliest starting time of activity (i, j)
LSij = Latest starting time of activity (i, j)
EFij = Earliest finishing time of activity (i, j)
LFij = Latest finishing time of activity (i, j)

The critical path calculations are done in the following two ways :
(a) Forward Pass Calculations method
(b) Backward Pass Calculations method

Forward Pass Calculations Method


In this method, calculations begin from the initial eventevent, proceed through the events
in an increasing order of event number and end at the final event of the network. At each
node (event), the earliest starting and finishing times are calculated for each activity. The
method may be summarized as follows :
Step 1 : Set Ej = 0, i = 1
Step 2 : Calculate the earliest starting time ESij for each activity that begins at event i i.e.
ESij = Ei for all activities (i, j) that start at node i.
Step 3 : Calculate the earliest finishing time EFij of each activity that begins at event i by
adding the earliest starting time of the activity with the duration of the activity thus
EFij = ESij + tij = Ei + tij
Step 4 : Go to next event (node), say event j(j > i) and compute the earliest occurance
time for event j. This is the maximum of the earliest finishing times of all activities ending
into that event i.e.,
Ej = for all immediate predecessor activities.

Step 5 : If i = n (final event number), then the earliest finishing time for the project is given
by

for all terminal activites.

Backward Pass Calculations Method


In this method, calculations begin from the terminal event, proceed through the events in
a decreasing order of event numbers and end at the initial event of the network. All each
node (event), the latest starting and finishing times are calculated for each activity. The
method may be summarized as follows :
Determination of Floats and Slack times

When the network diagram is completely draw, properly labelled, earliest and latest event
times are computed, then the next object is to determine the floats of each activity and
slack time of each event. The float of an activity is the amount of time by which it is
possible to delay its completion time without affecting the total project completion time.
There are three types of activity floats :
(i) Total float, (ii) Free float, (iii) Independent float

Total float : The float of an activity represnets the amount of time by which an activity
can be delayed without delay in the project completion time. Mathematically, the total float
of an activity (i, j) is the difference between the latest start time and earliest start time of
that activity (or the difference between the earliest finish time and latest finish time).
Hence the total float for an activity (i, j) is denoted by TFij and is computed by the formula.
TFij = LSij ESij or TFij = LFij EFij
or TFij = Lj (Ej + tij)
Free float : Sometimes, it may be needed to know how much an activitys completion
time may be delayed without causing any delay in its immediate successor activities. This
amount of float is called free float. Mathematically, the free flat for an activity (i,j) is
denoted by FFij and is computed by,
FFij = Ej Ei tij
As TFij = Lj Ej tij and Lj Ej
TFij Ej Ej tij i.e. TFij FFij
Hence for all activities, free float can take values from zero upto total float but it can nto
exceed total float. Again, free float is very useful for rescheduling the activities with
minimum disruption of earlier plans.

Independent float : In some cases, the delay in the completion of an activity neither
affects its predecessor nor the successor activities. This amount of delay is called
independent float. Mathematically, independent of an activity (i, j) denoted by IFij is
computed by the formula,
IFij = Ei Li tij
The negative independent float is always taken as zero.

Event slack or Event float : The slack of an event is the difference between its latest
time and its earliest time. Hence for an event i, slack = Li Ei

Critical Event : An event is said to be critical if its slack is zero ie., Li = Ei for i-th event.

Critical activity : An activity is critical if its total float is zero i.e. LSij = ESij or LFij = EFij for
an activity (i, j). Otherwise, as activity is called non-critical.

Critical Path : The continuous chain or sequence of critical activities in a network diagram
is called the ciritcal path. This path is the longest path in the network from starting event
to ending event and is shown by a dark line or double lines to make distinction from other
non-critical path.
The length of the critical path is the sum of the individual times of all critical activities lying
on it and define the minimum time required to complete the project. The ciritical path on
a network diagram can be identified as
(i) For all activities (i, j) lying on the critical path the E-values and L-values for tail and
head events are equal i.e. Ei = Lj & Ei = Li
(ii) On the critical path, Ej Ej = Lj Li = tij

Main features of the critical path

The critical path has two main features :


(i) If the project has to be shortened, then some of the activities on that path must be
shortened. The application of additional resources on other activities will not give the
desired results unless that critical path is shortened first.
(ii) The variation in actual performance from the expected activity duration time will be
completely reflected in one-to-one fashion in the anticipated completion of the whole
project.

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