UNIVERSITY OF PORTSMOUTH

DEPARTMENT OF MATHEMATICS

FIRST ATTEMPT EXAMINATIONS 2012/2013

LEVEL 7

U20857 - M453 - STRATEGIC LOGISTICS

Duration: 1 Hour 30 Minutes

Instructions: Answer three out of four questions

This exam is marked out of 60

Additional Information: This is a CLOSED book examination

Permitted: No materials permitted

Calculator: Calculators ARE permitted

Where permitted, calculators must not have
long-term data storage

Provided: Queuing Formula Sheet and Tables

Question 1

A health authority has to decide whether to locate vaccination centres in each of

five towns in its authority, labelled A-E. Each potential vaccination centre has a
population living within a 15-minute drive of it, a population living within a 30-
minute drive of it, an accessibility score (measured on a scale of 1 (poor) – 10
(excellent) and a set up cost (in £10,000s). The proposed centres are at least an
hour’s drive from each other. The corresponding data is given in the Table below:

Town Population Population Accessibility Set up Cost

within 15 within 30 Score (£10,000s)
minute minute drive
drive
A 25,000 45,000 2 3
B 60,000 75,000 3 6
C 70,000 90,000 7 10
D 15,000 70,000 5 7
E 40,000 65,000 8 6

The health authority has the following goals:

Goal 1: Open exactly 3 vaccination centres

Goal 2: Ensure that at least 120,000 people are within a 15-minute drive of a
vaccination centre
Goal 3: Ensure that at least 180,000 people are within a 30-minute drive of a
vaccination centres
Goal 4: Achieve a total accessibility score of at least 15.
Goal 5: Limit costs to £120,000

(a) Given that the company considers all goals as equally important, formulate
(but do not solve) a weighted goal programme whose solution will inform the
health authority in which towns to open vaccination centres
[12 Marks]

(b) Give the achievement function of a lexicographic goal programme which will
prioritise the goals in the following order: (i) population close to vaccination
centres, (ii) accessibility, (iii) cost and (iv) number of vaccination centres.
[3 Marks]

(c) Give the alterations and additions needed to your model from part (a) in order
to formulate a Chebyshev goal programme maintaining the same relative
importance levels as part (a)
[5 Marks]

[Total marks for question = 20 Marks]

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 Question 2

(a) Describe the usage of multi-criteria optimisation to inform strategic logistics

decision making in one of the following situations:
 Facility location and routing in a congested mega-city
 Construction and operation of a large offshore wind farm
 Ensuring appropriate service levels in a busy primary care hospital
 The sugar supply chain from its planting in a tropical country through
to its purchase by a consumer in a Western European country
 Preparation and response to a Tsunami during a tourist season.
 The development of future Arctic logistics routes

For your chosen example explain (i) the strategic decisions that need to be
taken, (ii) the criteria by which the goodness of a logistics solution can be
measured and (iii) any potential conflicts between those criteria.
For your chosen example, discuss the usage of one of the following
strategic decision making tools to assist in the strategic decision making: (i)
goal programming, (ii) queuing theory or (iii) data envelopment analysis.

[20 Marks]

[Total marks for question = 20 Marks]

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Question 3

(a) A container port is undergoing an increase in trucks due to a surge in demand

caused by recent supply chain disruption. Demand has risen from 40 to 70
trucks per hour that need to be processed by one of a number of identical
cranes. The container port currently has 2 cranes and now needs to increase
the number of cranes. Each crane can process 25 trucks per hour.
Interarrival and service times are exponential and there is an unlimited space
to queue and a large truck population size. Calculate how many cranes are
required to return the truck processing times (W) to below the previous levels.

[15 Marks]

(b) Write a brief report to the management of the container port explaining the
logistics of the situation in part (a), contrasting your recommended solution
with any other solutions that use less cranes.

[5 Marks]

[Total marks for question = 20 Marks]

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Question 4

(a) A company wishes to measure the efficiency of its four North American
warehouses with respect to the inputs of their total annual budget (in
$100,000s), number of employees and pieces of equipment and the outputs
of daily throughput of Type A and Type B products. The relevant data is given
in the Table below:

Warehouse Budget Number Pieces of Throughput Throughput

Location ($100,000s) Employees Equipment (Item A/day) (Item B/day)
Montreal 12 80 90 500 300
Seattle 10 100 120 600 450
Atlanta 15 120 100 800 700
Sacrament 11 90 110 700 500
o

Formulate (but not solve) the Data Envelopment Analysis linear programme
whose solution will tell the company the relative efficiency of its Atlanta
warehouse.

[10 Marks]

(b) Ten transportation providers (A-J) are under consideration by a company with
respect to two criteria, average time to delivery (on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 is
the fastest) and cost (on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 is the cheapest). The scores
for each system are given by the following Table:

Provider Time to delivery Cost

A 3 7
B 6 7
C 8 3
D 4 10
E 1 9
F 8 4
G 6 5
H 10 3
I 9 1
J 6 4

By plotting the designs on a graph, classify the systems as Pareto efficient or

inefficient. Mark the efficient frontier, ideal point, anti-ideal point and nadir
point on your graph.

[10 marks]

[Total marks for question = 20 Marks]

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Dylan Jones