Semester Prep
The department chair reviewed last year’s schedule, the degree requirements for the
ever popular Operations and Supply Chain major, and the emails that had drifted into
her mailbox over the last week. Naturally, every professor in the department had his
own pet course and wanted to maintain control of it while avoiding 8 a.m. classes at all
costs. In an effort to placate the senior faculty members of the department, the chair
sent an email asking them to supply the prep time for each of the classes they were
qualified to teach, promising to assign them the least taxing schedule possible. Each of
her department members had to teach at least two courses, but no more than three. The
elective courses, Project Management, Quality Management, Control and Planning,
Logistics, and Management Science each had to be offered once and the department
needed to offer at least six sections of the Introduction to Operations class. The prep
times each professor estimated for each course appear in the table below.
What is an appropriate objective function for this scenario?
On an AOA diagram, a ________ represents an activity of a project.
A) route
B) branch
C) path
D) node
A company has a goal of calling on at least 400 customers a month (goal 1), but no
fewer than 260 customers a month (goal 2). If X represents the number of customers
contacted, which pair of constraints listed below is the appropriate representation in a
goal programming problem?
A) X + d1
– – d1
+ = 400, X + d2
– – d2
+ = 260
B) X – d1
– + d1
+ = 400, X – d2
– – d2
+ = 260
C) X – d1
– + d1
+ = 400, X + d2
– – d2
+ = 260
D) X + d1
– – d1
+ = 400, X – d2
– + d2
+ = 260
The objective function in all goal programming models is to ________ from the goal
constraint levels.
A) maximize alternatives
B) minimize alternatives
C) minimize deviation
D) maximize deviation
People who forgo a high expected value to avoid a disaster with a low probability are:
A) risk takers.
B) risk averters.
C) risk calculators.
D) risk predictors.
The simplex method ________ be used to solve quadratic programming problems.
A) can
B) cannot
C) may
D) should
The following data represents quarterly sales of lawnmowers.
Given forecast errors of 6, 4, 0 and -2, what is the mean absolute deviation?
A) 2
B) 3
C) 4
D) 2.67
E) none of the above
The Krewe of Orpheus
The Krewe of Orpheus maintains a supply of swizzle sticks for events throughout the
year. Demand for swizzle sticks is shockingly low, a quick check of krewe records from
last year reveals that they used only 585,000, but the krewe president believes that they
should be good stewards of what they have, so they seek to manage this inventory using
the EOQ policy, although they prefer to refer to it as an EOKrewe policy for obvious
reasons. Swizzle sticks are not expensive items, they cost a nickel apiece largely due to
the club logo printed on each one. This also serves to increase the lead time as they
can’t be obtained from a standard restaurant supply house. Instead, they must be ordered
with an eye towards the six day lead time. It costs $15 to place an order, most of this
cost is a result of explaining the meaning of “Laissez les bons temps rouler” and why it
should be printed on the edge of each swizzle stick. Holding cost is 20% of purchase
price.
The supplier offers the Krewe of Orpheus a deal; if they will buy at least 50,000 at a
time, they will pay only 4.9 cents each, and if they buy at least 100,000 at a time, they
will pay only 4.8 cents each. What is the total cost of the optimal order quantity?
A) $29,668.93
B) $28,822.32
C) $28,647.75
D) $29,085.50
The Krewe of Orpheus
The Krewe of Orpheus maintains a supply of swizzle sticks for events throughout the
year. Demand for swizzle sticks is shockingly low, a quick check of krewe records from
last year reveals that they used only 585,000, but the krewe president believes that they
should be good stewards of what they have, so they seek to manage this inventory using
the EOQ policy, although they prefer to refer to it as an EOKrewe policy for obvious
reasons. Swizzle sticks are not expensive items, they cost a nickel apiece largely due to
the club logo printed on each one. This also serves to increase the lead time as they
can’t be obtained from a standard restaurant supply house. Instead, they must be ordered
with an eye towards the six day lead time. It costs $15 to place an order, most of this
cost is a result of explaining the meaning of “Laissez les bons temps rouler” and why it
should be printed on the edge of each swizzle stick. Holding cost is 20% of purchase
price.
The supplier offers the Krewe of Orpheus a deal; if they will buy at least 50,000 at a
time, they will pay only 4.99 cents each, and if they buy at least 100,000 at a time, they
will pay only 4.98 cents each. What is the total cost arising from the optimal order
quantity?
A) $29,521.78
B) $29,616.50
C) $29,668.93
D) $29,718.75
For some positive value of Z, the probability that a standard normal variable is between
0 and Z is 0.3554. The value of Z is:
A) 0.31.
B) 0.36.
C) 0.95.
D) 1.06.
A business owner is trying to decide whether to buy, rent, or lease office space and has
constructed the following payoff table based on whether business is brisk or slow.
The equal likelihood criterion strategy is:
A) Buy.
B) Rent.
C) Lease.
D) Brisk.
The following is a graph of a linear programming problem. The feasible solution space
is shaded, and the optimal solution is at the point labeled Z*.
This linear programming problem is a(n):
A) maximization problem.
B) minimization problem.
C) irregular problem.
D) cannot tell from the information given
The Krewe of Orpheus
The Krewe of Orpheus maintains a supply of swizzle sticks for events throughout the
year. Demand for swizzle sticks is shockingly low, a quick check of krewe records from
last year reveals that they used only 585,000, but the krewe president believes that they
should be good stewards of what they have, so they seek to manage this inventory using
the EOQ policy, although they prefer to refer to it as an EOKrewe policy for obvious
reasons. Swizzle sticks are not expensive items, they cost a nickel apiece largely due to
the club logo printed on each one. This also serves to increase the lead time as they
can’t be obtained from a standard restaurant supply house. Instead, they must be ordered
with an eye towards the six day lead time. It costs $15 to place an order, most of this
cost is a result of explaining the meaning of “Laissez les bons temps rouler” and why it
should be printed on the edge of each swizzle stick. Holding cost is 20% of purchase
price.
The supplier offers the Krewe of Orpheus a deal; if they will buy at least 50,000 at a
time, they will pay only 4.99 cents each, and if they buy at least 100,000 at a time, they
will pay only 4.98 cents each. What is the optimal order quantity?
A) 41,892
B) 46,837
C) 50,000
D) 100,000
A single-server waiting line system has an arrival pattern characterized by a Poisson
distribution with 3 customers per hour. The average service time is 12 minutes. The
service times are distributed according to the negative exponential distribution.The
expected number of customers in the system is:
A) 3.0.
B) 1.5.
C) 1.0.
D) .90.
Utiles are units of ________ measures of utility.
A) quantitative
B) objective
C) subjective
D) qualitative
The limits of the problem and the degree to which it pervades other units in the
organization must be included during the ________ step of the management science
process.
A) observation
B) definition
C) solution
D) implementation
A Gantt chart represents mainly:
A) an immediate identification of predecessor task.
B) a record-keeping device used in scheduling activities.
C) a general identifier.
D) the number of workers directly involved in the project.
After calculating the EOQ and informing their supplier of their order amount, they are
informed that the supplier is reluctant to break a case, that is, there are 10,000 swizzle
sticks in a case and they must be ordered in multiples of that amount. Not wanting to
understock, the krewe decides to round up to the next highest multiple of 10,000. What
is the increase in holding cost if they order at this amount?
A) $36.75
B) $42.50
C) $40.54
D) $39.46
The landlord ran the model in Excel and received the sensitivity report for the
constraints as contained in the table. Which of the following statements is correct?
A) If there are 2 more weeks available for work, it would be possible to increase rent by
$27.28 per week
B) Given the scenario, it is evident that a constraint is missing.
C) If the landlord installed two garage doors, rent could be increased by $23.64.
D) Given the scenario, it is evident that the objective function is misstated.
Queuing discipline refers to:
A) the reason waiting occurs in underloaded systems.
B) the willingness of customers to wait in line.
C) the order in which customers are processed.
D) how constant the interarrival times are.
A multiple-channel queuing system with a Poisson arrival rate and exponential service
time has an average arrival rate of 4 customers per hour and an average service time of
18 minutes per customer. What is the minimum number of servers required to avoid an
overloaded system?
A) 1
B) 2
C) 3
D) 4
A business professor wishes to model the duration of his commute through the busy
streets of Bangalore. He decides to model it based on the number of auto-rickshaws that
he passes during the first ten minutes of the drive. The continuous probability
distribution 7x – 2 serves as a good model.
What is the integral from 8 to 9 for this distribution?
A) 7
B) 23.5
C) 40
D) 57.5
The components of break-even analysis are:
A) cost and profit.
B) volume and cost.
C) volume, cost and profit.
D) volume and profit.
A positive deviational variable is the amount by which a goal level is:
A) underachieved.
B) exceeded.
C) minimized.
D) maximized.
Dinnertime
A professor is planning an informal gathering for 100 or so of his closest friends. The
project breaks down as follows:
Which of these is not a critical path activity?
A) hire quartet
B) hire valets
C) schedule butler
D) schedule cleaning crew
Semester Prep
The department chair reviewed last year’s schedule, the degree requirements for the
ever popular Operations and Supply Chain major, and the emails that had drifted into
her mailbox over the last week. Naturally, every professor in the department had his
own pet course and wanted to maintain control of it while avoiding 8 a.m. classes at all
costs. In an effort to placate the senior faculty members of the department, the chair
sent an email asking them to supply the prep time for each of the classes they were
qualified to teach, promising to assign them the least taxing schedule possible. Each of
her department members had to teach at least two courses, but no more than three. The
elective courses, Project Management, Quality Management, Control and Planning,
Logistics, and Management Science each had to be offered once and the department
needed to offer at least six sections of the Introduction to Operations class. The prep
times each professor estimated for each course appear in the table below.
Take note of the phrase in the scenario that reads “Naturally, every professor in the
department had his own pet course…” Provide an example of a constraint that makes
sure a professor gets to teach his favorite course.
In using rounding of a linear programming model to obtain an integer solution, the
solution is:
A) always optimal and feasible.
B) sometimes optimal and feasible.
C) always optimal.
D) always feasible.
In the method of Lagrange multipliers, the model constraints are multiplied by
Lagrange multipliers and ________ the objective function.
A) divided by
B) multiplied by
C) added to
D) subtracted from
The assignment problem constraint x41 + x42 + x43 + x44 ≤ 3 means:
A) agent 3 can be assigned to 4 tasks.
B) agent 4 can be assigned to 3 tasks.
C) a mixture of agents 1, 2, 3 and 4 will be assigned to tasks 1, 2 or
D) There is no feasible solution.
The arrival rate is the:
A) time between arrivals to the service facility.
B) rate items arrive at the server after being in queue.
C) rate of arrivals to the service facility.
D) time a customer spends in line.
A rendering plant wishes to use the data (sales records from a few local businesses and
the month of the year) to help determine their supply level for the coming months. The
records shown in the table provide an excellent opportunity for you to assist them with
their forecasting.
What is the three-period weighted moving average for July using the weights 0.5 (most
recent), 0.3, and 0.2?
A) 48.99
B) 45.6
C) 49.51
D) 46.09
Project Sand Mandala
Carrie meticulously calculated the early and late start and finish times for her latest
project and recorded them using different colors of sand on a pristine slab of white
marble. She used red for late start and late finish times and green for early start and
early finish times. Activity durations and their identifiers were written with black sand.
She finished her task and had an opportunity to admire her work only briefly before a
colleague came by and swept most of it away. Sadly, this was before Carrie could
record the numbers on a more permanent medium, so now she turns to you to help.
Fill in all of the missing information from the table.
Consider the following network.
Identify all paths in the network.
Pro-Carpet company manufactures carpets in Northwest Indiana and delivers them to
warehouses and retail outlets. The network diagram given in the figure below shows the
possible routes and travel times (in minutes) from the carpet plant to the various
warehouses or retail outlets.
V = Valparaiso, P=Portage, G=Gary, Ha=Hammond, Hi=Highland, M =
Merillville, L = Lansing
Write the constraint associated with the Valparasio (source) node for the 0-1 integer
linear programming formulation of the shortest route problem.
A crew of mechanics at the Department of Transportation garage make minor repairs to
snowplows during the winter. The snowplows break down at an average rate of 4
vehicles per day and breakdowns are distributed according to the Poisson distribution.
The mechanic can service an average of 7 vehicles per day with a repair time
distribution that approximates a negative exponential distribution. Assume an 8 hour
day.
What is the average time that a snowplow is out of service?
The Vacation
Final exams are almost here and once they are done, it will be time to reward myself
with a well-deserved vacation. As a state employee, I haven’t seen a raise since… well,
ever. Thus an important criterion, in fact the most important criterion is to find an exotic
region that can be visited inexpensively. There are three states of nature that could
impact costs in these five areas of interest, and they correspond to the relative strength
of the US Dollar against that region’s dominant currency. Rather than squander my time
doing any actual publishable research, instead I have determined the average cost per
day to visit each region under each of the possible states of nature. This table, which
should not be construed as actual vacation advice, appears below.
I spend a lot of time second guessing myself and would hate to look back in a year or
two and realize that I had spent more than I needed to. Where should I recommend we
travel and why?
Zevon Enterprises
Zevon Enterprises provides services for clients worldwide and to protect all parties to
this course as well as Zevon, we shall refer to those services as X1, X2, and X3. Each of
these services has its own special mix of needs for the resources the company has at its
disposal. The X1 product requires three lawyers, seven guns, and $6,000; the X2
product requires two lawyers, five guns, and $4,000; and the X3 product requires four
lawyers, six guns, and $7,000. Zevon has access to 5,000 lawyers, 10,000 guns, and
$15,000,000. For ease of conversation, Zevon employees usually speak about dollars as
“per thousand” so one of them asking for $7 means that they really need $7,000.
Zevon’s demand is variable depending on what they charge for it. For example, the X1
product’s demand is 200 – 2.25p1. The demand for X2 is 300 – 3p2, and the demand for
X3 is 400 – 3.5p3. The per unit profit forX1 through X3 can be calculated by subtracting
the per unit cost from the sales price, so for X1, the profit is p1 – 25, for X2 the profit is
p2– 3, and for X3 the profit is p3– 3.5.
Formulate an appropriate objective function for this scenario.
________ are pieces of information from the problem environment.
Given the following linear programming problem:
maximize 4x1 + 3x2
subject to 4x1 + 3x2 ≤23
5x1 – x2 ≤ 5
x1, x2 ≥ 0
What is the (Cj – Zj) value for S1 at the initial solution?
The ________ is the average of the sum of the squared errors.
Refer to the table below to answer the question(s) that follow:
If the earliest finish for activity C is equal to 10 months and its duration 3 months, what
is its earliest start?
Mad Over Donuts
An entrepreneurial resident of the Oklahoma City metropolitan area is interested in
securing a new franchise for Mad Over Donuts. Ideally this franchise would be
centrally located so delivery could be economically handled and all citizens could enjoy
fresh, delicious donuts delivered to the doorstep. The main cities and anticipated
demand (in thousands per day) are shown in the table.
Zoey’s Catnip Toys faces the following relationship between price and demand: v =
2000 – 200p. The fixed cost is $500 and variable cost is $1. Write an expression for the
total profit.
The local operations manager for the IRS must decide whether to hire 1, 2, or 3
temporary workers. He estimates that net revenues (in thousands) will vary with how
well taxpayers comply with the new tax code.
If he thinks the chances of low, medium, and high compliance are 20%, 30%, and 50%,
respectively, what are the expected net revenues for the number of workers he will
decide to hire?
In the basic EOQ model, if D = 40 per month, Co = $9, and Cc = $8 per unit per month,
what is the EOQ?
A script writer has received an advance against royalties of $10,000. The royalty rate is
$2 for every performance in the U.S., and $3 for every performance outside the U.S.
Define variables for this problem.
________ is the optimal order quantity that will minimize the total inventory costs.