2020/21, Sem 2

Question 1. The Poli Group operates four colleges and provides education to high school
students in grades 6, 7 and 8. Now, the group decide to close one of the 4 colleges in summer of
2021, and has to redistribute its students to the other 3 colleges. A policy of the Group is that the
Group will provide transportation/bus service to students who live far away from the colleges
(more than 1 km). Thus, the Group is going to make a plan that can minimize the total
transportation expense when redistributing students.

The transportation expenses (annual) between each district and each college are list below. Here,
zero means that transportation is not required, and a dash means that the assignment is infeasible.
The capacities of colleges (the number of students that a college can accommodate) are also shown
in the table.

Amount of students
District Grade-6 Grade-7 Grade-8
1 144 171 270
2 222 168 420
3 165 176 418
4 98 140 224
5 195 170 270
6 153 126 342

Transportation expense ($/Student)

District College 1 College 2 College 3
1 $1500 $0 $3500
2 - $2000 $2500
3 $3000 $1500 $1000
4 $1000 $2500 -
5 $0 - $2000
6 $2500 $1500 $0
Capacity: 900 1,100 1,000

The Group requires that

 in each college, the percentage of each grade's students to the total number of
students must be between 30% ~ 36%.

In the second table above, the numbers of students for each grade and each district are
shown (for the academic year 2021/2022). When redistributing students, assume that any
student and be assigned to any one of the 3 colleges. (This is made possible by modifying
the college attendance region.)

As a graduate from FB/PolyU master program, you will help the Group management
decide redistributing students: assigning students in each district to the 3 colleges, how?

a. Formulate a linear programming model (algebraic model) for this problem, and then use
Excel to solve it. What is your resulting recommendation to the Group? (You are required
to explain the algebraic model concisely in the "answerbook". To simplify ignore the
consideration that "student number must be an integer" for this question.) (10 marks)

b. The Group is thinking about removing some transportation services to cut expenses.
They think that it is well acceptable for students to go the college on their own as well, if
the traveling distance is between 1 and1.5 km; that is, those transportation services with an
expense of $1000 can be cut. Please revise part-a model to fit this "cut expense" option,
and solve using Excel. (You are NOT required to present and explain the algebraic model
again, but must include the spreadsheet for this question.) Please summarize the ket results

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and information for the Group management (in "answerbook"). Suppose you are the
management. What decision would you make? Why? (5 marks)

c. Return to the model formulated in part a. Now, the Group notices the heavy traffic
congestion in district 6. This may increase the transportation expense for students from
district 6, and the increment could be up to 10%. Please use the sensitivity report to find
out how much the transportation expense can increase, for students from district 6 to
college 1, before the current optimal solution changes. (Assume the transportation
expenses to the other 2 colleges remain unchanged.) In case the allowable increase is
within 10%, please solve for the new optimal solution with a 10% increase. (5 marks)

d. Continue part c. Next, suppose the transportation expense from district 6 would increase
by the same percentage for all the colleges. Use the sensitivity report to determine how
large this percentage can be before the current optimal solution might no longer be
optimal. If the allowable increase is less than 10%, use Solver to find the new optimal
solution with 10% increase. (5 marks)

e. Return to the model formulated in part a. The Group now considers using movable
rooms to add capacity to colleges 1 and/or 2 in the next academic year. A movable room
can accommodate 20 students, but will incur an additional annual cost of $12,500. For the
colleges 1 and 2 respectively, please use the corresponding shadow price to answer
whether it helps save cost by using the movable room; and when it is worth doing so, use
the sensitivity report to find out how many movable rooms could be added before the
shadow price would no longer be valid. (10 marks)

f. The Group now feels that it is not desirable to divide a district for different colleges, and
would like to assign all students from the same district to a single college. (The current
policy is still in force; that is, transportation must be provided to students who need to
travel more than 1 km.) Please Formulate a BIP model (algebraic model) for this problem,
and then use Excel to solve it. (You are required to explain the algebraic model concisely
in the "answerbook".) How much expense is increased due to this new consideration ("no
dividing" requirement)? (5 marks)

Question 2. Herr Cutter is a German barber. He has expanded his business, and now runs
a two-person barbershop. He opens his shop at 8:00 am each weekday morning. His
customers arrive randomly at an average rate of two customers per hour. He and his
associate require an average of 20 minutes for each haircut. They are equally qualified. In
other words, for any customer, either Herr Cutter and his associate will complete the
service with roughly the same service time, and this service time mainly depends on the
service requirement of the customer.
To be concrete, the table below shows his queueing system (the interarrival times and
service times in particular) in action over the beginning of a typical morning.
Please complete the following table (in the “answerbook”) so that for each of his first 7
customers, indicates when the customer’s haircut began, when the haircut was finished,
and how long he waited in queue and in system. Furthermore, plot the number of
customers in this queueing system over the first 80 minutes, and calculate their average
waiting times in the queue and in the system (in the space below). (10 marks)

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interarrival haircut haircut haircut time in time in

customer (arrival time) begins duration ends queue system
1 5 (8:05) 16
2 7 (8:12) 25 [write your answer]
3 3 22 [in the answerbook]
4 8 23
5 20 17 [write your answer]
6 5 25 [in the answerbook]
7 7 19

Question 3. Take a look at the taxi stance at K-Rail Station. The arrivals of both the taxis
and passengers are completely unpredictable. On average, in every 10 minute, there will
be 5 taxi arrival and 6 passenger arrivals. When there is no taxi at the stance, an arriving
passenger will leave and go to take a train or bus right away. On the other hand, a taxi will
not leave until it can take a passenger. Assume the passengers pay an average fare of $120.

a. What is the average number of taxis at the stance? What is the average revenue per hour
for taxis? Explain your models and answers concisely. (5 marks)

b. The K-Rail management now approaches you, a graduate from FB/PolyU master
program, for recommendations. Please identify the problem(s) about the taxi stance, to
which you can apply your knowledge in queueing models to help. Please provide your
recommendations to address those problems, and justify your recommentations using your
knowledge in queueing models briefly. (5 marks)

Question 4. In a city, there are 4 fire stations that can reach any part of the city within 10
minutes, the required response time. Refer to the picture below. The circled numbers
indicate the locations of the 4 stations. The city is divided into 11 tracts, labeled as 1, 2, ...,
11 (not circled). From each station, the dashed lines point to the tracts that the station can
respond to within 10 minutes. (Otherwise, for example, station 2 can not reach tract 10
within the required response time, and therefore will not be responsible for fires in tract
10.) Now, the city authority wants to optimize the resource deployment, and raises a
question: Is it possible to reduce the number of fire stations, while meeting the 10-minute
response time requirement? If yes, which station can be shut down? Formulate an
algebraic model for this problem, and then use Excel to solve it. (You are required to
explain the algebraic model concisely in the "answerbook".) (10 marks)

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Question 5. True-False questions. (10 marks)

(1) The discovery of the simplex method in 1947 was the beginning of management science as
a discipline.
(2) When formulating a linear programming problem on a spreadsheet, the Excel equation for
each output cell can typically be expressed as a SUMPRODUCT function.
(3) It is the nature of the application that determines the classification of the resulting linear
programming formulation.
(4) When dealing with huge real problems, there is no such thing as the perfectly correct linear
programming model for the problem.
(5) The purpose of a linear programming study is to help guide management’s final decision
by providing insights.
(6) Changing the objective function coefficients may or may not change the optimal solution,
but it will always change the value of the objective function.
(7) It is possible to have a constraint in a BIP that excludes the possibility of choosing none of
the alternatives available.
(8) The constraint x1 ≤ x2 in a BIP problem means that alternative 2 cannot be selected unless
alternative 1 is also selected.
(9) The goal of queuing analysis is to minimize customer waiting lines.
(10) Multiple-server queueing systems can perform satisfactorily with somewhat higher
utilization factors than can single-server queueing systems.

Question 6. Read the following article that describes a management science application to
health care.
 Ross Anderson, Itai Ashlagi, David Gamarnik, Michael Rees, Alvin E. Roth,
Tayfun Sönmez, M. Utku Ünver, “Kidney Exchange and the Alliance for Paired
Donation: Operations Research Changes the Way Kidneys Are Transplanted,”
Interfaces, vol 45, no. 1 (January–February 2015), pp. 26–42. (You may search for
this article from PolyU Library system, or any other sources. The journal
“Interfaces” has been renamed as “INFORMS Journal on Applied Analytics”.)

Recently, Dr Yip, the CEO of the Poli Hospital, is interested in the approach of
management science and data analytics. He believes that the approach can be used to
improve the hospital management and the healthcare services. He then hopes to promote
the approach to his colleagues, and decides to compile an introduction to the approach,
titled "a brief introduction to the (overlapping steps of) management science approach".
You are a recent graduate from FB/PolyU master program and are working as an assistant
for Dr Yip. Dr Yip also learns that you have studied the approach in your master program,
and thus asks you to help on this issue.

Please draft the introduction for Dr Yip so that he can circulate it to some senior staffs
(administrative staffs, doctors and nurses) for educational purpose. You are required to

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draw on materials or concrete examples from the above article so that the introduction
reads more relevant to health care practices (highlight those materials in red) and is easy
for health workers to understand. The draft should contain no more than 1000 words.
(20 marks)

END

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