Final Assessment Test - November 2016

Course: MEE437 - Operations Research

Class NBR(s): 7732 / 7773 / 8594 Slot: E1+TE1
Time: Three Hours Max. Marks: 100

PART – A (5 X 5 = 25 Marks)
Answer any FIVE Questions
1. A firm can produce three types of cloth, say: A,B and C. Three kinds of wool are required for it, say:
red, green and blue wool. One unit length of type A cloth needs 2 meters of red wool and 3 meters
of blue wool; one unit length of type B cloth needs 3 meters of red wool, 2 meters of green wool
and 2 meters of blue wool; and one unit of type C cloth needs 5 meters of green wool and 4 meters
of blue wool. The firm has only a stock of 8 meters of red wool, 10 meters of green wool and 15
meters of blue wool. It is assumed that the income obtained from one unit length of type A cloth is
Rs.3.00, of type B cloth is Rs.5.00, and of type C cloth is Rs.4.00.
Determine how the firm should use the available material, so as to maximize the income from the
finished cloth.
2. A department head has four subordinates, and four tasks have to be performed. Subordinates differ
in efficiency and tasks differ in their intrinsic difficulty. Time each man would take to perform each
task is given in the effectiveness matrix. How the tasks should be allocated to each person so as to
minimize the total man-hours?

Subordinates

I II III IV

A 8 26 17 11
Tasks
B 13 28 4 26

C 38 19 18 15

D 19 26 24 10

3. Differentiate between PERT and CPM techniques.

4. A manufacturing company purchases 9,000 parts of a machine for its annual requirements, ordering
one month’s requirement at a time. Each part costs Rs.20. The ordering cost per order is Rs.15 and
the carrying charges are 15 per cent of the average inventory per year. How frequently should
orders for parts be placed? Also, determine the optimum size of each order.
5. A person repairing mobile phone sets finds that the time spent on the set has been exponential
distribution with mean 20 minutes. If the mobile phones are repaired in the order in which they
come and their arrival is approximately Poisson with average rate of 15 for 8 hours a day. What is
the repairman’s expected idle time each day?
6. A baking company sells one type of cake by weight. It makes a profit of Rs.9.50 on every kg of cake
sold on the day it is baked. It disposes of all cakes not sold on the date it is baked at a loss of Rs.1.50
per kg. If demand known to be rectangular between 300 and 400 kg, determine the optimum
amount to be baked?

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7. The cost of a machine is Rs.6,100 and its scrap value is only Rs.100. The maintenance costs are
found from experience to be:

Year 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Mainternace cost in Rs 100 250 400 600 900 1250 1600 2000
When should machine be replaced?
PART – B (5 X 15 = 75 Marks)
Answer any FIVE Questions
8. Use simplex method to solve the following LPP. [15]
Maximize z = x1 - x2 + 3x3
subject to
X1 + X2 + X3 ≤ 10

2X1 – X3 ≤2
2X1 - 2X2 + 3X3 ≤ 0
and X1, X2, X3 ≥ 0.
9. The table below shows the costs of transporting one unit from warehouse to the customer: [15]
Warehouse Demand
Customer A B C D
I 19 30 50 10 7
II 70 30 40 60 9
III 40 8 70 20 18
Requirement 5 8 7 14
Find out the optimal solution for transporting the products at a minimum cost using VAM and MODI
method.
10. The following table lists the jobs of a network along with their time estimates: [15]
Job Duration (days)
Most Most
i j Most likely
optimistic pessimistic
1 2 1 2 9
2 3 1 4 7
2 4 2 4 12
3 5 2 3 4
4 5 4 5 8
4 6 3 5 7
5 6 0.5 1 1.5
3 7 6 8 16
6 7 3 5 13
5 7 5 7 15
(a) Draw the project network;
(b) Calculate the project length and variance of the critical path and
(c) What is the probability of completing the project in 25 days?

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11. a) There are 5 jobs, each of which is to be processed through machines A,B and C in the order ABC. [8]
The process time in minutes is given below. Find the sequence of the processing of the jobs,
total elapsed time and idle time of each machine.
1 2 3 4 5

Machine A 40 70 80 30 50
Machine B 40 50 10 20 30
Machine C 70 90 50 60 20

b) Solve the following game with the following pay-off matrix, using dominance property. [7]
Player B
B1 B2 B3
A1 7 6 3
Player A A2 -2 2 -3
A3 5 9 7

12. a) In a paint manufacturing unit, each type of paint is to be ground to a specified degree of [8]
fineness. The manufacturer uses the same ball mill for a variety of paints and after completion
of each batch, the mill has to be cleaned and the ball charge properly made up. The change-over
from one type of paint to another, is estimated to cost Rs.80 per batch. The annual sales of a
particular grade of paint are 30,000 litres and the inventory carrying cost is Re.1 per litre. Given
that the rate of production is 3 times the sales rate, determine the economic order and batch
size.
b) The probability distribution of monthly sales of a certain item is as follows: [7]
Monthly sales 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
Probability 0.01 0.06 0.25 0.35 0.20 0.03 0.10

The cost of carrying inventory is Rs.30 per unit per month and the cost of unit shortage is Rs.70 per
month. Determine the optimum stock level which minimizes the total expected cost.
13. a) Workers come to a tool room to receive a special tool. The average time between arrivals is 60 [10]
seconds and assumed to be Poisson distribution. The average service time of tool room
attendant is 40 seconds. Determine average queue length, average number of workers in the
system, mean waiting time of arrival and probability that the tool room attendant will be idle.
b) Why is simulation used in decision making process? [5]
14. The probability pn of failure just before age n are shown below. If individual replacement costs [15]
Rs.1.25 and group replacement costs Re.0.50 per item, find the suitable replacement policy. Assume
that there are 1,000 items in use.

n 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

pn 0.01 0.03 0.05 0.07 0.10 0.15 0.20 0.15 0.11 0.08 0.05

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