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Chapter 8 - Solved Problems

Solved Problem 1:

Higgins Plumbing and Heating maintains a stock of 30-gallon hot water heaters that it sells to
home owners and installs for them. Owner Jerry Higgins like the idea of having a large supply
on hand to meet customer demand, but he also recognizes that it is expensive to do so. He
examines hot water heater sales over the past 50 weeks and notes the following:

a. If Higgins maintains a constant supply of 8 hot water heaters in any given week, how many
times will he be out of stock during a 20-week simulation? We use random numbers from the
seventh column of Table 8.5, beginning with the random digits 10.
b. What is the average number of sales per week (including stockouts) over the 20-week
period?
c. Using an analytic nonsimulation technique, what is the expected number of sales per week?
How does this compare with the answer in part (b)?

Solution:

Because the variable of interest is the number of sales per week, a fixed time increment
model should be used.

With a supply of 8 heaters, Higgins will be out of stock three times during the 20-week period
(in weeks 7, 14, and 16).

b. Average sales by simulation = = = 6.75 per week.

c. Using expected values,

E(sales) = 0.12(4 heaters) + 0.10(5) + 0.18(6) + 0.24(7) + 0.16(8) + 0.14(9) + 0.06(10)

= 6.88 heaters.

With a longer simulation, these two approaches will lead to even closer values.

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Solved Problem 2:

The manager of Denton Savings and Loan is attempting to determine how many tellers are
needed at the drive-in window during peak times. As a general policy, the manager wishes to
offer service such that average customer waiting time does not exceed 2 minutes. Given the
existing service level, as shown in the following data, does the drive-in window meet this
criterion?

Solution:

Since average waiting time is a variable of concern, a next event time increment model should
be used.

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Read the data as in the following example for the first row:

Column 1: Number of customer.

Column 2: From third column of random number Table8.5.
Column 3: Time interval corresponding to random number (random number of 50 implies a
2-minute interval).
Column 4: Starting at 9 A.M. the first arrival is at 9:02.
Column 5: From the first column of the random number Table 8.5.
Column 6: Teller time corresponding to random number 52 is 3 minutes.
Column 7: Teller is available and can start at 9:02.
Column 8: Teller completes work at 9:05 (9:02 + 0:03).
Column 9: Wait time for customer is 0 as the teller was available.
Column 10: Idle time for the teller was 2 minutes (9:00 to 9:02).

The drive-in window clearly does not meet the manager’s criteria for an average wait time of 2
minutes. As a matter of fact, we can observe an increasing queue buildup after only a few
customer simulations. This observation can be confirmed by expected value calculations on both
arrival and service rates.

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