OPTIMIZATION - 3AGI3 & Mastère GSI ENIT 2009-2010

Homework Assignment #1

Exercise 1.
In order to link a minefield to a loading terminal that is accessible by a truck, a cog
railway (chemin de fer à crémaillère) has to be constructed. The ore extracted from the
minefield will be sent down on small wagons moving along the railway. The possible rail
segments as well as their construction costs are given in the following network. The
minefield is located at node 1 and the terminal is at node 8.

2 3 6
12
7 4
9
4 7
1 3 15
8
5 4
2 18
4 29 8

Find the minimal cost railway using Dijkstra’s algorithm, then Ford algorithm.

Exercise 2.
Glueco is a commercial company specialized in selling domestic cleaning products in
three (3) different regions (Region 1, Region 2 and Region 3). In order to increase its
sales revenues, Glueco considers opening 3 selling points. Following a market study,
Glueco was able to estimate annual revenues in the 3 regions in terms of the number of
selling points to open in each region (see Table 1).

Table 1 : Average annual revenues

Nber of selling Average Annual revenues in thousand Dinars
points Region 1 Region 2 Region 3
0 400 300 200
1 600 500 300
2 800 700 550
3 850 850 700

The problem consists in determining the number of new selling points to open in each
region so as to maximize total average annual revenues of Glueco.

a. Show that this problem can be formulated as a shortest path problem. Define the
network and all relevant data.
b. Solve this problem using an appropriate algorithm.

A. Hadj-Alouane 1/2
OPTIMIZATION - 3AGI3 & Mastère GSI ENIT 2009-2010

Exercise 3.
An urban transportation company needs to determine work hours for each of its bus
drivers. The following table presents the possible work periods as well as their
associated costs. The objective is to have at least one driver on duty for each work hour
of the day (from 9h till 17h) while minimizing total cost.

Créneaux horaires 9h-13h 9h-11h 12h-15h 12h-17h 14h-17h 13h-16h 16h-17h

Coût 30 18 21 38 20 22 9

Solve this problem after formulating it as a shortest path problem on a given network.

Exercise 4.
Moris Company has learned that a competitor is planning to launch a new product. Given
that it has already started research aiming at developing a similar product, Moris has
decided to speed up the project in order to enter the market as quickly as possible.
Finishing this project requires the following 4 steps: concluding the research activities,
product design, production process design, and production/distribution.

In order to conduct these 4 steps, Moris has fixed a budget of 30 MD. For each step, one
of the following 3 options may be chosen: normal, moderate, speedy. The following
table gives, respectively, the duration and the cost of each option.

Research Development Design Prod-Dist

Option
Normal (5, 3) - - -
Moderate (4, 6) (3, 6) (5, 9) (2, 3)
Speedy (2, 9) (2, 9) (3, 12) (1, 6)

1. Show that the problem of optimally planning this project can be modeled as a
shortest path problem in a network.
2. Solve this problem using an extension of Ford algorithm.

Exercise 5.
Consider an undirected connected network G = (N, A) where N = {1, 2, …, n} is the set of
nodes and A is the set of edges. To each edge u∈A is associated a positive cost c(u). The
set of nodes is partionned into m nonempty subsets N1, N2, …, Nm. We suppose that N1 =
{1}. A feasible tour is a cycle that starts at node 1, visits one and only one node of each
of the subsets N1, N2, …, Nm, in this order, and returns to the origin node 1. The
problem consists in determining a feasible and minimum cost tour.

a. Show that this problem can be formulated as a shortest path problem, for which
you have to specify the network.
b. Describe a practical application to this problem.

A. Hadj-Alouane 2/2