Final Assessment Test (FAT) – May 2017

Course: MEE437 - Operations Research

Class NBR(s):2485 / 2488 Slot: G1+TG1
Time: Three Hours Max. Marks: 100

General Instructions: "Use of Standard normal distribution table is permitted"

Answer any FIVE Questions

(5 X 20 = 100 Marks)
1. An organization has three machines named M/c-1, M/c-2 and M/c-3 and it produces three products
named P-1, P-2 and P-3 using these three machines. Each product involves the operation of the
machines. The time available at the machines M/c-1, M/c-2 and M/c-3 are 100, 72 and 80 hours
respectively. The profit per unit of product P-1, P-2 and P-3 is Rs.22, Rs.6 and Rs.2 respectively. The
following table shows the time required for each operation for unit amount of each product.

Products

P-1 P-2 P-3

M/c-1 10 2 1

Machines M/c-1 7 3 2

M/c-1 2 4 1

Determine the optimal product mix so as to maximize the profit.

2. a) In the following transportation problem, if a unit from source is not shipped out to one of the [10]
destinations, a storage cost must be incurred. The storage costs per unit at sources P, Q and R be 6, 5
and 4. If, in addition, all the supply must be shipped out to make room for next batch of production,
then find the starting solution using VAM. Also formulate the mathematical model for the problem.

DESTINATION Supply
A B C

SOURCE P 2 3 2 20

Q 1 5 6 40

R 3 4 4 30

Demand 30 20 20

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 b) The rows of the following table below represent work crews and the columns represent jobs. The [10]
entries in the table show the costs of doing the jobs with the various crews. An entry of ‘-‘ indicates
that the crew cannot do the associated job. All the jobs must be done, but not all the crews need be
assigned. Each crew can do at most one job.

J1 J2 J3 J4

C1 - 8 6 12

C2 15 12 7 -

C3 10 - 5 14

C4 12 - 12 16

C5 18 17 - -

C6 - 13 - 14

Determine the optimal selection of a screw to each job so that the total cost is minimized.

3. a) The following table provides the data for a project. [5]

Activity (i, j) Duration (days)

Optimistic Most Pessimistic

likely

(1, 2) 1 2 3
(1, 3) 2 2 8
(2, 4) 1 2 3
(3, 4) 1 1.5 11
(3, 5) 0.5 1 7.5
(4, 5) 0 0 0
(4, 6) 1 2.5 7

Find the mean duration and variance of activities (3, 4) and (4,6).

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 b) A firm works 40 hours a week and has a capacity of overtime work to the extent of 20 hours in a [15]
week. It has received seven orders to be processed on three machines A, B and C, in the order ABC
to be delivered in a week’s time from now. The process times (in hours) are recorded in the
following table:

Job 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

M/c A 7 8 6 6 7 8 5

M/c B 2 2 1 3 3 2 4

M/c C 6 5 4 4 2 1 5

The manager, who in fairness insists on performing the jobs in the sequence in which they are received,
is refusing to accept an eighth order, which requires 7, 2 and 5 hours respectively on A, B and C
machines. What is your advice to him? Justify your advice including idleness of resources.

4. The following table gives the activities and their duration in a construction project and also provides
precedence relationship between activities.

Activity Immediate Predecessor Duration (days)

A - 12

B A 7

C A 11

D A 8

E A 6

F B 10

G C 9

H D,F 14

I E,G 13

J H,I 16

Determine the critical activities using the total float concept and its project completion time. Find out
the free float of D and I activities. Is it possible to do crashing analysis in the project? Justify your answer.

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5. a) The demand for a product is 600 units per week and the items are withdrawn at a constant rate. The [10]
setup cost for placing an order to replenish inventory is Rs.25. The unit cost of each item is Rs.3 and
the inventory holding cost is Rs.0.05 per item per week. (i) Assuming shortages are not allowed,
determine how often to order and what size the order should be. (ii) If shortages are allowed but
cost Rs.2 per item per week, determine how often to order and what size the order should be.

b) An organization stocks seasonal products at the start of the season and cannot reorder. The [10]
inventory item costs him Rs.35 each and he sells at Rs.50 each. For any item that cannot be met on
demand, the organization has estimated a goodwill cost of Rs.25. Any unsold item will have a salvage
value of Rs.20. Holding cost during the period is estimated to be 10% of the price. The probability
distribution of demand is as follows:

Units stocked 2 3 4 5 6

Probability of 0.35 0.25 0.2 0.15 0.05

demand

Determine the optimum number of items to be stocked. Suppose the under stocking cost is not known,
but the decision maker policy is to maintain a stock level of 5 units. Determine for what values of the
under estimating cost justify the optimal policy.

6. Vehicles are passing through a toll gate at the rate of 70 per hour. The average time to pass through the
gate is 45 seconds. The arrival rate and service rate follow Poisson distribution. Determine the average
number of vehicles waiting in the queue and the toll gate, the average waiting time a vehicle in the toll
gate. There is a complaint that the vehicles wait for a long duration. The authorities are willing to install
one more gate to reduce the average time to pass through the toll gate to 35 seconds if the idle time of
the toll gate is less than 9% and the average queue length at the gate is more than 8 vehicles, check
whether the installation of the second gate is justified?

7. a) Solve the following game problem whose payoff matrix given for player A [10]

B1 B2

A1 5 8

A2 -2 10

A3 12 4

A4 6 5

b) The probability Pn of failure just before age n are shown below. If the individual replacement costs [10]
Rs. 25 and group replacement costs Rs.6 per item, find the average cost of group replacement policy
and its optimal interval.
n : 1 2 3 4 5
Pn : 0.1 0.2 0.25 0.3 0.15

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