STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER:

Instructor: Laura Wagner

OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT
Lisbon, May 2022
DURATION: 2:00 hours

INSTRUCTIONS:
MARKER ONLY
1. Write your Name and Student Number at the top of every page of
the exam booklet.
1. ______ /20
2. This is a closed book exam. Non-text storing calculators are 2. ______ /20
permitted. 3. ______ /20
4. ______ /20
3. Duration: 2:00 Hours.
TOTAL: ____/80
4. Answer all the questions on the exam booklet.

5. Show logic since part marks will be given for method and partial results. If you feel that a question
is ambiguous, briefly explain your interpretation and state any assumptions you make.
Interpretation on the student’s part is an important component of the testing process.

GOOD LUCK!!

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STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER:

Question 1 (20 points)

BdC is a new accounting firm. At the moment, they are setting a new department focused in “tax
confidence’, which purpose is to prepare tax forms for its customers (mainly foreigners living in
Portugal, many of them not aware of the details of the Portuguese Fiscal Law).
As the deadline to submit the tax forms is coming soon, the company expects to have a large turnout
of requests in the next couple of months, on average 60 reports per day.
Once BdC accepts the client (do not consider this step in your analysis), customers start sending, by
mail or email, all relevant documents to fill the form.
First step is to organize all this paper work that will take, on average, 1 day per report. This first step
also includes checking if the information received is relative to a business or an individual. As this
department only processes individual reports, all the business reports (on average 25%) will proceed
to a different department.
Next step for individual reports is to classify the documents that usually takes 3 days per report. While
80% of the reports move for online final report, 20% of the reports need further information from the
customer (on average takes 5 days), and then go to on line final report (on average takes half a day).
It is also known that, on average, we have 5 reports waiting for organizing paper work, 4 waiting for
document classification, 2 reports waiting for further information, 3 reports waiting for on line final
report:

For simplifying your analysis, consider the system works in a steady state.

a) Draw a process flow diagram.

b) How long it will take a personal report that requires further information?
c) On average, how many reports are in the system?

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STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER:

Question 2 (20 points)

Rotterdam is one of the busiest ports in the world. however, Rotterdam has not moved into
container handling quite as quickly as the competing ports of Hamburg and Antwerp. In this
question you are asked to help the port authority predict the performance of a new container
facility.

The proposed facility has 2 berths that operate independently and can each unload and load a
container ship in 5 hours on average (with an exponential distribution). Since ships have to be
turned around as fast as possible, the facility will operate continuously (24 hours per day, 365 days
per year).

The port authority predicts that initially 40 ships per week will attempt to use the new facility. The
actual arrival times of ships are unpredictable, but historical records show that the arrival pattern
tends to follow a Poisson Process. In addition, for the purpose of this analysis, the port authority
assumes that any ship that would have to wait more than 10 hours for unloading to start will choose
to use the rival ports of Antwerp or Hamburg instead.

a. Specify the following parameters for a queueing model of the system:

arrival rate (in ships/week)
service rate (in ships/week)
number of servers

b. A computer model similar to QMACROS produces the following results:

Average wait in queue = 0.00862 weeks (NOTE: this average is for ships that do not quit the
queue, i.e., are served. All other ships wait exactly 10 hours and then move on to rival
ports)
Thruput = 38.5 ships/week
Use these numbers to find the following 6 statistics:
• fraction not served • average number in queue (for ships that are served)
• average number in system (for ships that are served)
• utilization • average time in system (for ships that are served)
You may derive them in any order, but label each result and show clearly how it was derived.
Feel free to continue your calculations on the next page.

c. The port authority expects the number of container ships that want to visit Rotterdam to
increase by 15% per year over the next ten years. For each of the performance measures below,
describe what will happen if the port authority fails to expand capacity: Thruput, Wait in queue,
Fraction not served.

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STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER:

Question 3 (20 points)

In the Arlanzones National Park case, we have been dealing with multiple product flow (in that case groups such
as sporting, Full, Nature, ect.). A major complication in the case was the handling of the travel times and distances
between activities. To answer the question how many groups can be handled by the park, we said that we actually
don’t need to look at the travel distance.
a) In your own word, please explain why we don’t need to look at the travel time and what assumptions did
help us with such a bold claim?
b) To handle multiple products and adopt the framework from single products there are two possible ways
how to make the calculation work. Please explain both of them (briefly).

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STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER:

Question 4 (20 points)

In the World bicicle relief case, we looked at a social enterprise and discussed how adding a for profit
sector to the non-profit one can actually help the company produce more bicicles (not only in total but
also the number of donated ones). To get there we formulated the following optimization problem.

s.t

How would you adapt the model if you have the following requests?
a) - If you have a new CEO who finds donation more important?

b) - If I say the local government can not sell more than you donate ?

c) - What if we want to make some profit?

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STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER:

Formula sheet (will be used in exams)

1_PROCESS AND CAPACITY ANALYSIS

Little’s Law: I = R x T

3_QUEUING | WAITING LINES

MM1model
MMS model
1
ρ ρ=
λ
ρ ρ=
λ 𝑊𝑠 = 𝑊𝑞 +
μ s.μ 𝜇

𝐿𝑠 = 𝜆. 𝑊𝑠
Lq ρ2 λ2
Lq = =
1−ρ μ(μ−λ)
𝐿𝑞 = 𝜆. 𝑊𝑞
Ls λ
Lq + ρ =
μ−λ

Wq Lq λ
=
λ μ(μ−λ)

Ws Ls
=
1
λ μ−λ

P0 1-ρ

Pn ρn P0

Table 1 – MMS table: Lq

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STUDENT NAME: STUDENT NUMBER: