Prof. Armin Zimmermann

Model-based quantitative engineering of systems and processes

• Modelling (stochastic Petri nets, colored stochastic Petri nets, UML State Machines etc.)
• Evaluation (performance, dependability, timeliness etc.)
• Simulation (fine-grained distributed simulation with dynamic load balancing, efficient simulation of highly dependable systems with rare-event simulation techniques etc.)
• Analysis (numerical analysis techniques, model-structure simplifications for approximative solutions etc.)
• Optimization (speedup of indirect optimization using model structure information and preoptimization)
• Control (controlling e.g. a manufacturing system directly with a Petri net model)

... of (stochastic) discrete event dynamic systems
 

Application of results and methods in practice, industrial applications in the areas

• Embedded systems and real-time communication in highly dependable systems
  • Automotive Systems
  • Avionics
  • Train control
• Manufacturing systems
• Workflow systems
• Logistics and supply chains

Software tool support

• Petri net modelling and analysis tool TimeNET
• Generic graphical user interfaces for modelling tools

Armin Zimmermann:
Stochastic Discrete Event Systems - Modeling, Evaluation, Applications.
Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York. ISBN 978-3-540-74172-5; October 2007.

more publications

Armin Zimmermann was born in Berlin in 1969. He studied computer science from 1988 to 1990 at Technische Universität Dresden. At the computer science department (now EE&CS) of Technische Universität Berlin he finished his Diploma in 1993. As a part of his thesis he implemented an analysis module of the Petri net tool TimeNET. In 1993 he received a grant from the graduate research training group on communication based systems of the Berlin universities. He has been a fellow of this program until 1997.

Since 1994 he was with the performance evaluation group of Prof. Hommel at TU Berlin. In 1994 he started working in a project on modelling and evaluation of manufacturing systems with colored stochastic Petri nets. This project (named POPP) was funded by the german research council (DFG) as a part of the "Schwerpunktprogramm Modellierung der Produktion" from 1994 until 1999.

A new modelling and analysis method for manufacturing systems based on Petri nets has been developed in this project. The resulting methods have been implemented as an extension of the modelling tool TimeNET. The generic graphical user interface Agnes was a spin-off that is now used for the tool TimeNET. Armin Zimmermann is project manager of TimeNET software development since 1996.

Armin Zimmermann held a position as a research fellow 1995-1999 and 1999-2006 as PostDoc research assistant at TU Berlin. During this time he was the principal investigator of the research group Model-Based Evaluation of Discrete Real-Time Systems and coordinated the graduate research training group "Stochastic Modelling and Quantitative Analysis of Complex Systems in Engineering".

He finished his Dissertation on modelling and analysis of manufacturing systems with Petri nets in September 1997. Armin Zimmermann received the Krone award, the Carl Ramsauer award, and the Chorafas Foundation award for this thesis.

In March 1998 and from September to December 1999 he was a visiting scientist at the Universidad de Zaragoza, Spain, in the research group of Prof. Silva.

He was a guest lecturer at Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 2001 and at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute for IT Systems Engineering of University Potsdam 2003 - 2006.

In 2006 he joined the Hasso Plattner Institute for IT Systems Engineering at the University Potsdam as a guest professor in the communication systems group.

His Habilitation thesis on Stochastic Discrete Event Systems has been accepted by the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at TU Berlin in 2005, and the Habilitation ("Lehrbefähigung") was awarded in June 2006.

He held a substitute professorship for Real-Time Systems and Robotics at TU Berlin 2006 - 2008. In summer 2008 he was appointed head of the System and Software Engineering group at Technische Universität Ilmenau, in the Computer Science and Automation faculty. Since 2012 he serves as director of the Institute for Computer and Systems Engineering of TUI. He was a guest researcher at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand during the winter semester 2018/19.

He published a book on Stochastic Discrete Event Systems - Modeling, Evaluation, Applications (Springer 2007). Since 2008 he serves as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics in the area Formal Methods, Distributed & Discrete Event Systems in Automation and Embedded Systems. He is a member of the Industrial Automated Systems and Controls Subcommittee of the IEEE IESTechnical Committee on Factory Automation (TCFA). Armin Zimmermann is editorial board member of the Int. Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems (IJCCBS), and member of the VDI-GPP working group FA514 "Monte Carlo Simulation" since 2019.

He teaches courses on Modelling, Performance analysis and Simulation, Software Engineering, Robotics, Real-time and Embedded Systems, Automation, and Operating Systems.

He is a member of the German Informatics Society (GI), IEEE, and VDI. His research interests include modelling, performance and dependability evaluation, optimization, and control of technical systems using discrete-event models as well as their tool support.