● x1 + x15 + x29 = 1
● x2 + x16 + x30 = 1
● x3 + x17 + x31 = 1
● x4 + x18 + x32 = 1
● x5+ x19 + x33 = 1
● x6 + x20 + x34 = 1
● x7 + x21 + x35 = 1
● x8 + x22 + x36 = 1
● x9 + x23 + x37 = 1
● x10 + x24 + x38 = 1
● x11 + x25 + x39 = 1
● x12 + x26 + x40 = 1
● x13 + x27 + x41 = 1
● x14 + x28 + x42 = 1
Answer to the Problem Statement:
1. A. The problem requires us to develop a schedule of work assignment between 3 Teams - Team1,
Team2 and Team3 in such a manner that it minimizes the overall time taken. Team 1 has five
members, Team 2 has four members and Team3 has three members.
B. On a normal summer WeeMow has 14 jobs, denoted by Job A to N. Each team works for 10
hours a day and factoring in inefficiencies, only 45 minutes in an hour are actually productive.
Resulting in the daily working time for a team being 450 minutes
45 mins (per hour) * 10 hours = 450 minutes
C. There also exists a daily budget of $1,000 that has to be split between the 3 teams
2. A matrix representing the intersection of the teams and jobs is created to house the variables of
the problem. Each intersection can hold 2 values “1” or “0” with “1” indicating that the
corresponding team has been allocated the corresponding job and “0” indicating that that job has
been allocated to someone else.
3. Adding information about the Job Time and and Job Costs allows us to calculate the Total Cost
(which must be less than $1,000) and Time Allocated (which must be lease than 450 minutes for
each team)
4. Using Solver we minimise cell “Q18” - Total Time and add constraints for budgetary and time limit
restrictions. We also keep the value of all the calls in “Assignments” row = 1, to ensure every job
is allocated and no job is allocated twice.
5. Running the solver function with these values and constraints we get the Total Time to be 1103
minutes with Team 1 - 448 minutes, Team 2 - 435 minutes and Team 3 - 220 minutes with the
following breakdown:
Job Team
A Team 1
B Team 3
C Team 2
D Team 2
E Team 1
F Team 1
G Team 1
H Team 1
I Team 2
J Team 2
K Team 2
L Team 3
M Team 1
N Team 1
6. Screenshot of the Excel Sheet
