Problem 9-27 The hospital administrator at St.

Charles General must appoint head nurses to

four newly established departments: urology, cardiology, orthopedics, and obstetrics. In
anticipation of this staffing problem, she had hired four nurses: Hawkins, Condriac, Bardot, and
Hoolihan. Believing in the quantitative analysis approach to problem solving, the administrator
has interviewed each nurse, considered his or her background, personality, and talents, and
developed a cost scale ranging from 0 to 100 to be used in the assignment. A 0 for Nurse Bardot
being assigned to the cardiology unit implies that she would be perfectly suited to that task. A
value close to 100, on the other hand, would imply that she is not at all suited to head that unit.
The accompanying table gives the complete set of cost figures that the hospital administrator felt
represented all possible assignments. Which nurse should be assigned to which unit?

  DEPARTMENT
NURSE UROLOGY CARDIOLOGY ORTHOPEDICS OBSTETRICS
Hawkins 28 18 15 75
Condriac 32 48 23 38
Bardot 51 36 24 36
Hoolihan 25 38 55 12

The table above represents a problem faced by the hospital administrator at St. Charles General,
which has four newly established departments that must have an assigned staff nurse in
anticipation of a staffing problem: (1) Urology, (2) Cardiology), (3) Orthopedics, and (4)
Obstetrics. Four nurses were hired with different backgrounds, personality, and talents to do the
job. The hospital administrator estimates the cost if the nurses are assigned to each of the four
departments. The hospital administrator wished to assign the jobs so that total cost is minimized
and each job must have one person assigned to it, and each person can only be assigned to one
department. Therefore, the assignment method will be used. In the assignment problem, the
variables are required to be either 0 or 1. Due to the special structure of this problem with the
constraint coefficients as 0 or 1 and all the right-hand-side values equal to 1, the problem can be
solved as a linear program.

In defining the variables, let

X nd =1 if person n is assigned ¿ department d 0 otherwise

where
n = 1, 2, 3, 4 with 1 = Hawkins, 2 = Condriac, 3 = Bardot, and 4 = Hoolihan
d = 1, 2, 3, 4 with 1 = Urology, 2 = Cardiology, 3 = Orthopedic, and 4 = Obstetrics

The LP formulation is
Minimize total cost = 28X11 + 18X12 + 15X13 + 75X14 + 32X21 + 48X22 + 23X23 + 38X24
+ 51X31 + 36X32 + 24X33 + 36X34 + 25X41 + 38X42 + 55X43 + 12X44
subject to X11 + X12 + X13 + X14 ≤ 1 (Nurse row movement)
X21 + X22 + X23 + X24 ≤ 1
X31 + X32 + X33 + X34 ≤ 1
 X41 + X42 + X43 + X44 ≤ 1

X11 + X12 + X13 + X14 = 1 (Department column movement)

X21 + X22 + X23 + X24 = 1
X31 + X32 + X33 + X34 = 1
X41 + X42 + X43 + X44 = 1

Xnd = 0 or 1 for all n and d

Using excel, the total cost of assigning each nurses to four different departments where initially
computed as follows:

Using sensitivity analysis, it was determined that Nurse Bardot initially assigned to Cardiology
with a cost of $36 may be interchangeable with Nurse Hawkins initially assigned to Orthopedics
with a cost of $15. Assigning Bardot in Orthopedics would lessen his assigned cost to $24 and
Hawkins would now have an assigned cost of $18 in Cardiology. The adjusted total cost of
hiring 4 nurses would lessen from $95 to $86.

Based on the table above, Hawkins is assigned in the Cardiology Department; Condriac is
assigned in Urology Department; Bardot is assigned in Orthopedics Department; and Hoolihan is
assigned in Obstetrics Department. All other variables are 0. The total cost is $86.
Because the hospital administrator problem only consists of four nurses and four departments,
one easy way to find the best solution is to list all possible assignments and their respective costs.
For example, if Hawkins is assigned in Cardiology Department; Condriac is assigned in Urology
Department; Bardot is assigned in Orthopedics Department; and Hoolihan is assigned in
Obstetrics Department, the total cost will be $86, with the above table summarizing all twenty-
four assignment options. The table also shows that the least-cost solution would be to assign
Hawkins in Cardiology Department, Condriac in Urology Department, Bardot in Orthopedics
Department, and Hoolihan in Obstetrics at a total cost of $86.

The same result was yielded using QM for Windows wherein, the least-cost solution would be to
assign Hawkins in Cardiology Department, Condriac in Urology Department, Bardot in
Orthopedics Department, and Hoolihan in Obstetrics at a total cost of $86. The total cost appears
in the upper left cell, $86 on the table below:
Thus, the assignments are listed on the below list form.

The marginal cost is also displayed below. For example, if we want to assign Hawkins in the
Urology Department, the total will increase by $13 to $99.