IDS 532 Review 2 (Sessions 2&3)

Canan Adelman

1. In the National Cranberry case, converting dry berry holding bins to flexibly store either wet or
dry berries would
(a) reduce makespan. (d) (a) and (b) but not (c).
(b) reduce overtime costs. (e) (a) (b) and (c).
(c) reduce truck queuing.
2. “Makespan” is:
(a) another word for cycle time. (d) the number of distinct products
(b) the time required to finish all the work. a plant produces.
(c) the reciprocal of inventory turns. (e) both (a) and (c).
3. A chemical plant processes Putrescine, which has an intense foul odor and is therefore stored
in a closed tank. Part of the process involves pumping the Putrescine into an open vat where
it is mixed with circulating air (mixing it in a closed container would be hazardous). A city
ordinance limits daily Putrescine pumping into the open vat to one continuous 6 hour period.
Assume the plant pumps Putrescine into the vat throughout the allowed period at a steady rate
of 7,000 gallons per hour, and can pump it out at a steady rate of 4,000 gallons per hour.

(a) What is the daily highest level (in gallons) of Putrescine in the open vat?
(b) How long (in hours) is the period each day during which there is any Putrescine in the open
vat?
(c) The plant is charged a fine of $0.08 per gallon per hour for any Putrescine in the open vat
over the course of the day. Assume the city prorates the fines for any fraction of an hour
or gallon. What is the plant’s daily total in Putrescine fines?
(d) If need be, the pumps that pump Putrescine out of the vat can work for 24 hours a day.
What is the capacity utilization of these pumps?
(e) How long on average does a drop of Putrescine stay in the vat (in hours)?

4. Consider the following linear program:

max x
x+y ≤1
x, y ≥ 0

(a) What is the solution to this linear program?

(b) How does the solution change when you add the constraint x + y ≤ 2?
(c) How does the solution change when you drop the constraint x, y ≥ 0?

5. A farmer is deciding how much corn, soybeans, and wheat to plant in the coming growing season
to maximize expected contribution. The following table shows expected crop yields and expected
contributions towards fixed costs per bushel for each crop:

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IDS 532 Review 2 (Sessions 2&3)
Canan Adelman

Crop Expected Yield Expected Contribution/Bushel

soybeans 50 bushels/acre $2/bushel
corn 150 bushels/acre $1/bushel
wheat 60 bushels/acre $1.50/bushel

The farmer has 400 acres of available land. To facilitate crop rotation, he requires that no single
crop be planted on more than half of his land. Also, the farmer has available storage for at most
30,000 bushels of harvested crops. Assume that all of his harvested crops are to be stored at the
end of the season, so he must have sufficient storage for his entire anticipated harvest.
Formulate a linear program to compute the optimal number of acres to allocate to each crop:

(a) Clearly define your decision variables.

(b) Clearly define your objective function.
(c) Clearly list all constraints.
(d) Solving this linear program, Excel solver finds a maximum expected contribution of 43333.33.
The sensitivity report states that the shadow price of the storage facility (in bushels) is 0.67
(allowable increase 10000, allowable decrease 8000). How would the expected contribution
change if the farmer had available storage for 31,000 bushels?

6. Consider the following two-stage hospital admissions process. Upon arriving at the hospital,
a typical patient waits 15 minutes before being examined in one of four examination rooms.
The examinations take 20 minutes. Following the examination, the patient proceeds to a single
nurse’s station. There is a typical wait of 5 minutes for the nurse, who takes blood and urine
samples in 4 minutes.

(a) What is the average cycle time of the admissions process including the initial wait (in
minutes)?
(b) What is the capacity of the admissions process (in patients per minute)?

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IDS 532 Review 2 (Sessions 2&3)
Canan Adelman

7. A supermarket chain has developed a weight-loss plan. Every day, dieters on this plan pick up
a package of freshly prepared meals for the whole day. The plan lasts 4 weeks, but there are no
commitments and dieters buy packages on a day-by-day basis. On any given day there are an
average of 60,000 active dieters in the plan. The chain sells on average 3,750 packages every day
to dieters starting on the plan. Most dieters quit before the end of the plan. It is estimated that
only 20% of the dieters starting the plan follow it until completion. (The proportion of dieters
staying on the plan more than 4 weeks is negligible.)

(a) How many of the active dieters on any given day will follow the plan to completion?
(b) On average, how many days do quitting dieters stay on the plan?

8. The critical path is the sequence of steps through which all jobs must pass that
(a) takes the shortest time, (c) takes the longest time,
excluding wait time. excluding wait time.
(b) takes the shortest time, (d) takes the longest time,
including wait time. including wait time.