Mansoura University 4th Year Prod.

Engineering
Faculty of Engineering Analysis of Prod. Systems
Prod. Eng. Dept. 2020/2021 – 1st Term

Exercise No. 3 – Assignment Problems

Q1) A law firm has four cases currently pending. A decision has to be made as to which
lawyer should be assigned to which case to get them ready for hearing. The expected amount
of time (in days) each lawyer would take to process the four cases based on past experience
is given the following table.

Case
(Days)
1 2 3 4
Adam 3 2 4 5
Lawyer

Steve 4 2 6 3
Bernard 6 3 5 1
Hank 2 3 7 9

a) What is the assignment that would minimize the total time required for the four cases?
b) Formulate the problem as a Linear Programming one.

Q2) On a given day District head quarter has the information that one ambulance van is
stationed at each of the five locations A, B, C, D and E. The district quarter is to be issued
for the ambulance van to reach 6 locations namely, P, Q, R, S, T and U, one each. The
distances in Km. between present locations of ambulance vans and destinations are given in
the matrix below.

Distance To
(Km) P Q R S T U
A 18 21 31 17 26 29
B 16 20 18 16 21 31
From

C 30 25 27 26 18 19
D 25 33 45 16 32 20
E 36 30 18 15 31 30

a) Decide the assignment of vans for minimum total distance.

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Q3) A project manager is at the initial stage of undertaking a construction project which
consists of five jobs, namely, job 1: tunneling, job 2: building, job 3: bridge work, job 4:
road work and job 5: earth work. There are five foremen reporting to him and he does not
know which job should be assigned to which foreman. Therefore, he sets a test paper which
consists of five questions, each question related to each job. The foremen take the test and
answer all the five questions (each question carries 20 marks). The scores obtained by the
foremen on each question are shown in the table below. How should the project manager
assign jobs to the foremen based on the result of the test?

Foreman
Score
a b c d e
1 15 7 12 17 10
2 7 10 18 19 11
Job

3 8 12 19 18 12
4 6 6 9 11 7
5 13 13 10 17 14

Q4) Biggio's Department Store has six employees available to assign to four departments in
the home furnishings, china, appliances, and jewelry. Most of the six employees have
worked in each of the four departments on several occasions in the past and have
demonstrated that they perform better in some departments than in others. The average daily
sales for each of the six employees in each of the four departments are shown in the table
below. Employee 3 has not worked in the china department before, so the manager does not
want to assign this employee to china.

Department Sales
Department
Sales ($) Home
China Appliances Jewelry
Furnishings
1 340 160 610 290
2 560 370 520 450
Employee

3 270 — 350 420

a) Formulate the problem as a Linear Programming one.

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Q5) Three applicants apply for five jobs. Job 1 must be filled by some applicant, and it is
felt that applicant 3 should not be given job 5. The costs of assigning the applicants to the
jobs in thousands of dollars are given in the following table. Find the minimal cost
assignment.

Cost Table
Job
Cost ($×103)
a b c d e
1 4 2 6 3 5
Applicant

2 6 2 5 4 3
3 5 7 6 2 1

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