BS 341 TUTORIAL

15TH APRIL, 2024

PRINCE DANIELS, TUTOR

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024

 TRANSPORTATION
Zambian Airways can buy its jet fuel from any one of four vendors. The airline’s needs for the
upcoming month at each of the airports it serves are 1250litres at Ndola airport, 1000litres at
Livingstone airport, 1500litres at Lusaka international airport and 1250litres at Mfuwe Airport.
Each vendor can supply fuel to each airport at a price (K’000) given below by the following
schedule:

Ndola Livingstone Lusaka Mfuwe

Vendor one 50 70 100 50
Vendor two 60 50 120 20
Vendor three 60 60 80 70
Vendor four 80 50 140 40

Each vendor, however, is limited in the total number of litres it can provide during any one
month. The capacities are 750litres for vendor one; 1750litres for vendor two; 1000litres for
vendor three and 1500litres for vendor four.

Required:

Using appropriate methods determine a purchasing policy that will optimize supply the
airline’s requirements at each airport at an optimal total cost.

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024

NETWORKS
Panarottis Pizza has opened a branch in Kitwe’s Mukuba mall and plans a free delivery policy
to its customers within Kitwe town. This strategy is aimed at improving sales over the coming
months. Assuming a delivery man (on a motorcycle) begins his journey at A and he is heading
to L which is the destination point. Distances through other points (in Km) are all shown on
the network below.

G 32
12
8 I
B 5 23
20
10 E
5 2 10
L
1 K
7
C 14 6
25 F
A
4
J
35 1

D 6
17 3

a) Using the Dijkstra algorithm method or mapping method, find the shortest route a
deliveryman can take from source A to destination L to minimize the total distance travelled.

b) Suppose a motorcycle uses 50litres of fuel per 200km. How many litres of fuel will be
required for this trip? Given that, fuel cost K25.89 per litre. How much should the company
budget for fuel?

c) Assuming Panarottis Pizza has customers in all the other locations (A,B,
C,D,E,F,G,H,I,J,K,L) on the network. Determine how the routes should be designed to reach
out to all customers with the objective of minimizing the total distance travelled.
What will be the total distance?

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024

 PERT

ABSA bank Africa (former Barclays bank) is planning to install a new computerized accounts
system. The Bank management has determined the activities required completing the project,
the precedence relationships of the activities, and activity time estimates as shown in the
following table:
Activity Description Preceding Optimistic Most Pessimistic
activity (weeks) likely (weeks)
(weeks)
AB Position recruiting - 5 8 17
C System development - 3 12 15
D System training A 4 7 10
E Equipment training A 5 8 23 1
F Manual system test B,C 1 1 13
G Preliminary system changeover B,C 1 4 9
H Computer–personnel interface D,E 3 6 7
I Equipment modification D,E H 1 2.5 1
J Equipment testing F,G 1 1 2
System debugging and installation 2 2
K Equipment changeover G,I 11
5 8

Required:
Construct an activity-on-arrow network and determine the critical path, standard deviation
and the probability that the project will be completed in 40 weeks.

QUEUING AND SIMULATION

1) In a departmental store one cashier is there to serve the customers. And the customers pick up
their needs by themselves. The arrival rate is 9 customers for every 4 minutes and the cashier can
serve 10 customers in 4 minutes. Assuming Poisson arrival rate and exponential distribution for
service rate, find:

(a) Average number of customers in the system.

(b) Average number of customers in the queue or average queue length.
(c) Average time a customer spends in the system.
(d) Average time a customer waits before being served.
(e) The utilization factor
(f) The probability that 2 customers will arrive

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024

2) U-Rest mattress limited in Ndola manufactures around 200 six inch mattresses a day. Depending
on the availability of raw materials and other conditions, the daily production has been varying
from 196 to 204 mattresses, whose probability distribution is given below:

Production/day: 196 197 198 199 200 201 202 203 204
Probability: 0.11 0.20 0.14 0.06 0.11 0.05 0.09 0.09 0.15
The finished mattresses are transported in specially designed container truck that can load a
maximum of 200 mattresses per delivery. Using the following 20 random numbers: 10, 54, 27,
77, 50, 23, 04, 45, 18, 61, 53, 24, 78, 89, 82, 00, 98, 09, 15, and 34. Simulate the process to
find out:

i. What will be the average number of mattresses waiting in the factory?

ii. What will be the number of empty spaces in the truck?

3) A well-known bank has opened a branch in Dundumwezi were it will have five (5) counters
to deal with all kind of customers. Customers are found to arrive in a Poisson manner at a
rate of 5 per hour for deposits, withdraws, account opening, etc. The service time is found
to have exponential distribution with mean 24 minutes. Customers are served on a first
come, first served basis. Calculate:
i. The average number of customers in the system
ii. The average time a customer spends in the system
iii. The average queue length
iv. The average waiting time for customers

4) The director of finance for a farm cooperative is concerned about the yield per acre she expect
from this year’s maize crop. The probability distribution of the yields for the current weather
conditions is given below:

Yield in kg per acre Probability

120 0.26
140 0.18
160 0.12

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024

 180 0.44
She would like to see a simulation of the yield she might expect over the next 10 years especially
with the current unstable weather patterns.

i) Simulate the average yield she might expect per acre using the following random numbers: 20,
72, 64, 85, 31, 23, 48, 94, 76, and 29.

She is also interested in the effect of market price fluctuations on the cooperative’s farm revenue.
She makes this estimate of per kg prices for maize:

Price per kg (Kwacha) Probability

2 0.15
2.1 0.05
2.2 0.1
2.3 0.25
2.4 0.15
2.5 0.3
ii) Simulate the price she might expect to observe over the next 10 years using the following
random numbers: 82, 95, 18, 96, 20, 74, 56, 11, 62, and 14.

iii) Assuming that prices are independent of yields, combine these two into the revenue per acre
and also find out the average revenue per acre she might expect every year

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024
End of the Examination Paper!

PRINCE DANIELS – 2024