International Journal of Computing and Optimization

Vol. 2, 2015, no. 1, 1 - 5

HIKARI Ltd, www.m-hikari.com
http://dx.doi.org/10.12988/ijco.2015.41226

Assignment Problem of a Legal Firm

in Kumasi, Ghana

Douglas Kwasi Boah

Department of Mathematics
University for Development Studies
P. O. Box 24 Navrongo - Ghana

Isaac Kwasi Adu

Department of Mathematics
Valley View University, Techiman Campus
P. O. Box 183 B/A-Ghana

Francis Julius Gyebil

Mathematics & Statistics Department

Kumasi Polytechnic, Ghana
P. O. Box 854 Kumasi-Ghana

Copyright © 2014 Douglas Kwasi Boah, Isaac Kwasi Adu and Francis Julius Gyebil. This is an
open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits
unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is
properly cited.

Abstract

In this paper, the concept of assignment problem was applied to solve a problem
for a Legal Firm A in Kumasi which had a difficulty in assigning nine different
cases to its nine junior lawyers. Based on the data collected, Management
Scientist Version 5 Software which uses Hungarian Method was used to solve the
problem. Optimal assignments of the cases to the junior lawyers were obtained for
the Legal Firm A. It was obtained that, Cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 should be
assigned to Lawyers 1, 9, 2, 6, 7, 8, 5, 3 and 4 respectively. Also, the optimal
hours to be expended by the firm on Cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are 180, 170,
169, 143, 190, 159, 162, 176 and 167 hours respectively. Finally, the total optimal
number of hours to be expended by the firm on all the nine cases is 1516 hours. It
2 Douglas Kwasi Boah et al.

is strongly recommended that Legal Firm A should employ at least one operations
researcher to assist the firm in its activities.

Keywords: Assignment Problem, Hungarian Method, Optimal Assignments,

Optimal Hours

Introduction
The assignment problem is a special case of the transportation problem. It arises
in a variety of decision-making situations. Typical assignment problem involves
assigning jobs to machines, agents to tasks, sales personnel to sales territories,
contracts to bidders, and so on. A distinguishing feature of the assignment
problem is that one agent is assigned to one and only one task. Specifically, we
look for the set of assignments that will optimize a stated objective such as
minimize cost, minimize time or maximize profits. The Hungarian Method (Kuhn,
1955) is a popular algorithm for solving most assignment problems in Operations
Research.
A number of papers in the theory and applications of assignment problems have
been reported in the literature. Abraham and Aneja (1993) considered two related
problems which simultaneously generalized both assignment problem and
bottleneck assignment problem. Sasaki (1995) looked at a new approach to one-
sided assignment problems. Maxon and Bhadury (2001) worked on a multi-period
assignment problem with repetitive tasks and tried to introduce a human element
into the analysis. Wan and Ji (2001) presented a Tabu search heuristic for
component assignment problem in PCB assembly. Bogomolnaia and Moulin
(2002) presented a simple random assignment problem with a unique solution.
Abdulkadiroglu and Sonmez (2003) looked at Ordinal efficiency and dominated
sets of assignments. Nuass (2003) described a special purpose branch-and-bound
algorithm for solving assignment problems. Sourd (2004) studied the continuous
assignment problem with the aim of solving scheduling problems with irregular
cost functions. Zhang and Bard (2004) presented a multi-period machine
assignment problem. Odior et al (2010) addressed a problem of effectiveness of
feasible solutions of a multi-criteria assignment problems.

A legal firm in Kumasi had a problem of assigning nine (9) different cases to its
nine (9) junior lawyers in order to minimise the total hours expended by the firm.
We used the concept of assignment problem to determine an optimal assignment
of cases to the lawyers so as to minimise the total hours expended by the firm.
Since the firm requires anonymity, it is identified by surrogate name A throughout
the paper.

Materials and Methods

The concept of assignment problem was applied to solve a problem for a Legal
Firm A in Kumasi which had a difficulty in assigning nine different cases to its nine
Assignment problem of a Legal firm in Kumasi, Ghana 3

junior lawyers. According to the head (senior lawyer) of the firm, due to
differences in experience and expertise, the junior lawyers were expected to spend
varying amounts of time on the cases. Data collected (estimated time requirements
in hours) from the head of the Legal Firm A is shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1: Lawyers, Cases and Estimated Time Requirements in hours

Case 1 Case 2 Case 3 Case 4 Case 5 Case 6 Case 7 Case 8 Case 9

Lawyer 1 180 216 178 192 188 200 203 212 166
Lawyer 2 200 188 169 214 193 212 182 195 208
Lawyer 3 230 210 189 220 216 193 190 176 219
Lawyer 4 195 203 212 185 198 168 217 184 167
Lawyer 5 240 217 225 190 210 184 162 200 173
Lawyer 6 175 158 180 143 173 211 214 209 242
Lawyer 7 216 202 188 164 190 219 193 173 190
Lawyer 8 213 178 211 175 200 159 186 192 184
Lawyer 9 192 170 215 178 206 169 212 214 205

Source: Legal Firm A in Kumasi, 2014

Results and Discussions

Based on the data collected, Management Scientist Version 5 Software developed
by Anderson et al (2000) which uses Hungarian Method (Kuhn, 1955) was used to
solve the problem. Optimal assignments of the cases to the junior lawyers were
obtained for the Legal Firm A as shown in Table 2 below.

Table 2: Optimal Assignments of Cases to Lawyers of Legal Firm A

OPTIMAL ASSIGNMENTS OPTIMAL HOURS

Assign Lawyer 1 to Case 1 180
Assign Lawyer 9 to Case 2 170
Assign Lawyer 2 to Case 3 169
Assign Lawyer 6 to Case 4 143
Assign Lawyer 7 to Case 5 190
Assign Lawyer 8 to Case 6 159
Assign Lawyer 5 to Case 7 162
Assign Lawyer 3 to Case 8 176
Assign Lawyer 4 to Case 9 167
TOTAL OPTIMAL HOURS 1516

It follows from Table 2 that, Cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 should be assigned to

Lawyers 1, 9, 2, 6, 7, 8, 5, 3 and 4 respectively. Also, the optimal hours to be
expended by the firm on Cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 are 180, 170, 169, 143,
4 Douglas Kwasi Boah et al.

190, 159, 162, 176 and 167 hours respectively. Finally, the total optimal number
of hours to be expended by the firm on all the nine cases is 1516 hours.

Conclusion and Recommendations

In this paper, the concept of assignment problem has been applied to solve a
problem for a Legal Firm A in Kumasi which had a difficulty in assigning nine
different cases to its nine junior lawyers. Based on the data collected,
Management Scientist Version 5 Software which uses Hungarian Method was
used to solve the problem. Optimal assignments of the cases to the junior lawyers
were obtained for the Legal Firm A. It was obtained that, Cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7,
8 and 9 should be assigned to Lawyers 1, 9, 2, 6, 7, 8, 5, 3 and 4 respectively.
Also, the optimal hours to be expended by the firm on Cases 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8
and 9 are 180, 170, 169, 143, 190, 159, 162, 176 and 167 hours respectively.
Finally, the total optimal number of hours to be expended by the firm on all the
nine cases is 1516 hours. It is strongly recommended that Legal Firm A should
employ at least one operations researcher to assist the firm in its activities.

References
[1] A. Abdulkadiroglu and T. Sonmez, Ordinal efficiency and dominated sets of
assignments, Journal of Economic Theory, 112 (2003), pp. 157-172.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/s0022-0531(03)00091-7

[2] D. R. Anderson, D. J. Sweeney and T. A. Williams, The Management

Scientist, 2000, version 5.

[3] A. Bogomolnaia and H. Moulin, A Simple Random Assignment Problem with

a Unique Solution, Economic Theory, 19 (2002), pp. 623 - 636.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s001990100168

[4] H. W. Kuhn, The Hungarian Method for the assignment problem, Naval
Research Logistics Quarterly, 2 (1955) pp. 83–97.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/nav.3800020109

[5] S. L. Maxon and J. Bhadury, An Ms-excel implementation of a multi-period

assignment problem with repetitive tasks, Proceedings of the 13th Annual CSU-
POM Conference, California State University San Bernardino, 2001, pp. 39–48.

[6] R. M. Nauss, Solving the generalized assignment problem: an optimizing and

heuristic approach, Institute for Operations Research and Management Sciences
(INFORMS), 2003. http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.15.3.249.16075
Assignment problem of a Legal firm in Kumasi, Ghana 5

[7] A. O. Odior, C. Owaba and O. E. Oyawale, Determining Feasible Solutions of

a Multicriteria Assignment Problem, Journal of Applied Sciences and
Environmental Management, 14 (1), 2010, pp. 35-38.
http://dx.doi.org/10.4314/jasem.v14i1.56481

[8] A. P. Punnen and Y. P. Aneja, Categorized Assignment Scheduling, Journal of

the Operational Research Society, 44 (1993), pp. 673–679.
http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2584041

[9] H. Sasaki, Consistency and Monotonicity in Assignment Problems,

International Journal of Game Theory, 24 (1995): 373-397.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/bf01243039

[10] F. Sourd, The continuous assignment problem and its application to pre-
emptive and non-pre-emptive scheduling with irregular cost functions, Informs
Journal on Computing 16(2), 2004, pp. 198-208.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.1030.0034

[11] Y. F. Wan and P. Ji, A Tabu search heuristic for the component assignment
problem in PCB assembly, Assembly Automation, Vol. 21 (3), 2001, pp. 236 –
240. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/eum0000000005619

[12] X. Zhang and J. F. Bard, A multi-period machine assignment problem,

European Journal of Operational Research, 170 (2004), pp. 398–415.

Received: December 18, 2014; Published: January 29, 2015