Latorre Biel, Juan IgnacioJiménez Macías, EmilioPérez de la Parte, MercedesSáenz Díez, Juan CarlosMartínez Cámara, EduardoBlanco Fernández, Julio2018-08-312018-08-3120161687-8140 (Print)1687-8140 (Electronic)10.1177/1687814016680516https://academica-e.unavarra.es/handle/2454/30330Decision-making in technological systems, such as communication networks, manufacturing facilities and supply chains, constitutes a common requirement able to lead companies galore to success or failure. This article presents a decisionmaking methodology, where the feasible structural configurations to be analysed are chosen heuristically in the frame of a single optimization problem. For stating the optimization problem and solving it efficiently, appropriate formalisms would be used. Compound Petri nets, a particular kind of parametric Petri nets, and alternatives aggregation Petri nets, are two Petri net–based formalisms able to integrate in the same model different alternative structural configurations. Moreover, even having different characteristics that might make them useful for different applications, both formalisms present common features, such as including a set of exclusive entities and the possibility of developing compact Petri net models, by the removal of redundant information. This article is also focused on the transformation algorithm between compound Petri nets and alternatives aggregation Petri nets. This algorithm is devoted to transform a model described by one of the formalisms into an equivalent model, that is, with the same behaviour, represented using the other formalism. Finally, several application examples are given for illustrating the steps of the transformation algorithm.12 p.application/pdfeng© The Author(s) 2016. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).Alternatives aggregation Petri netsCompound Petri netsParametric Petri netsDecision support systemsSimulationOptimizationinfo:eu-repo/semantics/articleinfo:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess