Date 11/10/2013
42401 Project Assignment 1
Scheduling of the Central Security Checkpoint
GAMS and Excel
This report has been generated using GAMS as the solver and then Excel to process and visualize the results.
In GAMS, two sets has been used. One set for the shifts, and another for the timeslots. Since in GAMS it is not allowed to have “.” or “,” in a set name, the timeslots has been denoted 4:30=45.
A file which holds all the parameters has been generated, named parameters.gms. In this file all the data such as a shift cost, the time shift table etc. is present.
Part 1 - Basic model for decision support
Question 1
Which benefits and drawbacks of
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This reduction is a result of only using 71 employees.
Question 7
Which challenges would you anticipate if PlanAir wishes to implement the solution using fewer than 75 employees?
PlanAir would have to fire employees since they won’t be needed anymore.
PlanAir also have to consider that by having less people in their workforce they won’t be as flexible.
PlanAir would be more sensitive to deviations from the forecasted demand.
Also the Union might intervene if contracts are not followed
Part 3 - Over and Understaffing
Question 8
Change the formulation from Question 5 to include over- and understaffing.
In the above, cot and cut are the costs of over- or understaffing in timeslot t. xt+ (xp(t) in GAMS file) and xt- (xm(t) in GAMS file) are the deviational variables that represents the amount of employees over- or understaffed.
Question 9
Suggest appropriate values for cot and cut. Why did you decide on these values?
The formula already attempts to minimize the total cost and as such, increased salary costs are already penalized.
In order to find the correct price for understaffing it was decided to look at what effects the staff at work had on the queue.
By taking the demand and subtracting the staff at work during the specific timeframes we generate a visual representation of how the queue changes
views of costs and the labor hours this can help create an appropriate budget and validate that the
Another weakness is seen on the limited space for expansion that is in the infrastructure. The current infrastructure can only accommodate 30 employees and even if there is the plan of growth by 20%, the space might not be adequate as growth normally necessitates a lot of space (Gupta & Jayaraman, 2010). This is because, there might be a need for a few offices and the current architecture might not be enough for the expansion and thus could delay the expansion.
Time is a risk for this project on several levels. 173 employees this will be affected as well as their customers. The company has agreed that this is a good move, however, if the process of setting up the equipment, managing the security and providing training goes on too long, then it will start to negatively affect the company over-all. Currently there is concern if the
Without keeping costs to a lower level, they wouldn’t be able to provide value product and services to the customers and this is a major source of conflict for the company. In this case demographics, some into the picture since the cost of employee determines the actual cost for the company (Wolf, 2009).
The current cost system allocates overhead costs once a year, as a function of direct labor dollars. This allocation strategy results in:
As already discussed it became apparent that the workload management system needed to be developed and changed to enable staff to meet the required targets, especially as current policy and political agenda was highlighting this as a significant issue in respect of work load and work load management (Munro 2011). As this was known to be impacting on production, cost and linked to serious case reviews throughout
Each of Janet’s approaches offers advantages and disadvantages. If cost is the principal criterion, all three plans can be improved. For example, rather than paying overtime wages to permanent employees during the busiest months, Janet could hire “temporary” workers (who will work for at most a few months but earn regular wages and
The potential loss of trained employees who are unable to assimilate to the new business model.
Therefore, one or two years may pass before the workforce could function to a degree of confidence to execute the work. Maintaining the workforce is expensive and at times seen as unnecessary. This functional requirement is critical for market entry of new product lines.
The objective functions and constraints mentioned in step two and three are translated into excel columns as follows Objective Function Formula
Ensure that the computation of salaries will be accurate and will not affect or interrupt other related processes in the system
The case study is about Enterprise Rent a Car, which initiated its business in the year 1957 at USA. The company slowly expanded its business and now they have more than 65000 workforce presented. The company is highly depending upon their workforce and to retain them longer, they use to give them training and development with passage of time. Hence, the company also do workforce planning for fulfilling future needs of the workforce.
Evaluation of the queues at each station revealed that Station 3 (Average Queue: 556.6, St Dev: 453.3) was more strained than Station 1 (Average Queue: 386.1, St Dev: 363.3). The firm understands that as queues Figure 2: Machine Utilization and Queues at Littlefield Technologies
Assume you have been hired as a managing consultant by a company to offer some advice that will help it make a decision as to whether it should shut down completely or continue its operations. It currently uses 100 workers to produce 6,000 units of output per month (working 20 days / month). The daily wage (per worker) is $70, and the price of the firm's output is $32. The cost of other variable inputs is $2,000 per day. It also tells us that the firm's fixed cost is “high enough” so that the firm's total costs exceed its total revenue. The marginal cost of the last unit is $30.