Downtown Health Clinic needs to order influenza vaccines for the next flu season. The Clinic charges its patients $15.00 per vaccination and each dose of vaccine costs the clinic $4.00 to purchase. The Center for Disease Control has a long standing policy of buying back unused vaccines for $1.00 per dose. The Clinic estimates the following probability distribution for the season’s demand:Demand Probability2,000 0.053,000 0.204,000 0.255,000 0.406,000 0.10a. How many vaccines should the Clinic order to maximize its expected profit?b. The Clinic is trying to determine if they should participate in a new Federal program in which the cost of each dose is reduced to $2.00. However, to participate in the program, they can charge no more than $10.00 per vaccine. On strictly a profit maximizing basis, should the Clinic agree to participate?

Downtown Health Clinic needs to order influenza vaccines for the next flu season. The Clinic charges its patients $15.00 per vaccination and each dose of vaccine costs the clinic $4.00 to purchase. The Center for Disease Control has a long standing policy of buying back unused vaccines for $1.00 per dose. The Clinic estimates the following probability distribution for the season’s demand:Demand Probability2,000 0.053,000 0.204,000 0.255,000 0.406,000 0.10a. How many vaccines should the Clinic order to maximize its expected profit?b. The Clinic is trying to determine if they should participate in a new Federal program in which the cost of each dose is reduced to $2.00. However, to participate in the program, they can charge no more than $10.00 per vaccine. On strictly a profit maximizing basis, should the Clinic agree to participate?

Practical Management Science

6th Edition

ISBN:9781337406659

Author:WINSTON, Wayne L.

Publisher:WINSTON, Wayne L.

Chapter10: Introduction To Simulation Modeling

Section: Chapter Questions

Problem 31P: A new edition of a very popular textbook will be published a year from now. The publisher currently...

See similar textbooks

Similar questions

It costs a pharmaceutical company 75,000 to produce a 1000-pound batch of a drug. The average yield from a batch is unknown but the best case is 90% yield (that is, 900 pounds of good drug will be produced), the most likely case is 85% yield, and the worst case is 70% yield. The annual demand for the drug is unknown, with the best case being 20,000 pounds, the most likely case 17,500 pounds, and the worst case 10,000 pounds. The drug sells for 125 per pound and leftover amounts of the drug can be sold for 30 per pound. To maximize annual expected profit, how many batches of the drug should the company produce? You can assume that it will produce the batches only once, before demand for the drug is known.
The Tinkan Company produces one-pound cans for the Canadian salmon industry. Each year the salmon spawn during a 24-hour period and must be canned immediately. Tinkan has the following agreement with the salmon industry. The company can deliver as many cans as it chooses. Then the salmon are caught. For each can by which Tinkan falls short of the salmon industrys needs, the company pays the industry a 2 penalty. Cans cost Tinkan 1 to produce and are sold by Tinkan for 2 per can. If any cans are left over, they are returned to Tinkan and the company reimburses the industry 2 for each extra can. These extra cans are put in storage for next year. Each year a can is held in storage, a carrying cost equal to 20% of the cans production cost is incurred. It is well known that the number of salmon harvested during a year is strongly related to the number of salmon harvested the previous year. In fact, using past data, Tinkan estimates that the harvest size in year t, Ht (measured in the number of cans required), is related to the harvest size in the previous year, Ht1, by the equation Ht = Ht1et where et is normally distributed with mean 1.02 and standard deviation 0.10. Tinkan plans to use the following production strategy. For some value of x, it produces enough cans at the beginning of year t to bring its inventory up to x+Ht, where Ht is the predicted harvest size in year t. Then it delivers these cans to the salmon industry. For example, if it uses x = 100,000, the predicted harvest size is 500,000 cans, and 80,000 cans are already in inventory, then Tinkan produces and delivers 520,000 cans. Given that the harvest size for the previous year was 550,000 cans, use simulation to help Tinkan develop a production strategy that maximizes its expected profit over the next 20 years. Assume that the company begins year 1 with an initial inventory of 300,000 cans.
A new edition of a very popular textbook will be published a year from now. The publisher currently has 1000 copies on hand and is deciding whether to do another printing before the new edition comes out. The publisher estimates that demand for the book during the next year is governed by the probability distribution in the file P10_31.xlsx. A production run incurs a fixed cost of 15,000 plus a variable cost of 20 per book printed. Books are sold for 190 per book. Any demand that cannot be met incurs a penalty cost of 30 per book, due to loss of goodwill. Up to 1000 of any leftover books can be sold to Barnes and Noble for 45 per book. The publisher is interested in maximizing expected profit. The following print-run sizes are under consideration: 0 (no production run) to 16,000 in increments of 2000. What decision would you recommend? Use simulation with 1000 replications. For your optimal decision, the publisher can be 90% certain that the actual profit associated with remaining sales of the current edition will be between what two values?
W. L. Brown, a direct marketer of womens clothing, must determine how many telephone operators to schedule during each part of the day. W. L. Brown estimates that the number of phone calls received each hour of a typical eight-hour shift can be described by the probability distribution in the file P10_33.xlsx. Each operator can handle 15 calls per hour and costs the company 20 per hour. Each phone call that is not handled is assumed to cost the company 6 in lost profit. Considering the options of employing 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, or 16 operators, use simulation to determine the number of operators that minimizes the expected hourly cost (labor costs plus lost profits).
Play Things is developing a new Lady Gaga doll. The company has made the following assumptions: The doll will sell for a random number of years from 1 to 10. Each of these 10 possibilities is equally likely. At the beginning of year 1, the potential market for the doll is two million. The potential market grows by an average of 4% per year. The company is 95% sure that the growth in the potential market during any year will be between 2.5% and 5.5%. It uses a normal distribution to model this. The company believes its share of the potential market during year 1 will be at worst 30%, most likely 50%, and at best 60%. It uses a triangular distribution to model this. The variable cost of producing a doll during year 1 has a triangular distribution with parameters 15, 17, and 20. The current selling price is 45. Each year, the variable cost of producing the doll will increase by an amount that is triangularly distributed with parameters 2.5%, 3%, and 3.5%. You can assume that once this change is generated, it will be the same for each year. You can also assume that the company will change its selling price by the same percentage each year. The fixed cost of developing the doll (which is incurred right away, at time 0) has a triangular distribution with parameters 5 million, 7.5 million, and 12 million. Right now there is one competitor in the market. During each year that begins with four or fewer competitors, there is a 25% chance that a new competitor will enter the market. Year t sales (for t 1) are determined as follows. Suppose that at the end of year t 1, n competitors are present (including Play Things). Then during year t, a fraction 0.9 0.1n of the company's loyal customers (last year's purchasers) will buy a doll from Play Things this year, and a fraction 0.2 0.04n of customers currently in the market ho did not purchase a doll last year will purchase a doll from Play Things this year. Adding these two provides the mean sales for this year. Then the actual sales this year is normally distributed with this mean and standard deviation equal to 7.5% of the mean. a. Use @RISK to estimate the expected NPV of this project. b. Use the percentiles in @ RISKs output to find an interval such that you are 95% certain that the companys actual NPV will be within this interval.
Assume the demand for a companys drug Wozac during the current year is 50,000, and assume demand will grow at 5% a year. If the company builds a plant that can produce x units of Wozac per year, it will cost 16x. Each unit of Wozac is sold for 3. Each unit of Wozac produced incurs a variable production cost of 0.20. It costs 0.40 per year to operate a unit of capacity. Determine how large a Wozac plant the company should build to maximize its expected profit over the next 10 years.
You now have 10,000, all of which is invested in a sports team. Each year there is a 60% chance that the value of the team will increase by 60% and a 40% chance that the value of the team will decrease by 60%. Estimate the mean and median value of your investment after 50 years. Explain the large difference between the estimated mean and median.
A common decision is whether a company should buy equipment and produce a product in house or outsource production to another company. If sales volume is high enough, then by producing in house, the savings on unit costs will cover the fixed cost of the equipment. Suppose a company must make such a decision for a four-year time horizon, given the following data. Use simulation to estimate the probability that producing in house is better than outsourcing. If the company outsources production, it will have to purchase the product from the manufacturer for 25 per unit. This unit cost will remain constant for the next four years. The company will sell the product for 42 per unit. This price will remain constant for the next four years. If the company produces the product in house, it must buy a 500,000 machine that is depreciated on a straight-line basis over four years, and its cost of production will be 9 per unit. This unit cost will remain constant for the next four years. The demand in year 1 has a worst case of 10,000 units, a most likely case of 14,000 units, and a best case of 16,000 units. The average annual growth in demand for years 2-4 has a worst case of 7%, a most likely case of 15%, and a best case of 20%. Whatever this annual growth is, it will be the same in each of the years. The tax rate is 35%. Cash flows are discounted at 8% per year.
Suppose we are considering the question of how much capacity to build in the face of uncertain demand. Assume that the cost is $20 per unit of lost sales due to insufficient capacity. Also assume that there is a cost of $7 for each unit of capacity built. The probability of various demand levels is as follows: Demand—X Units Probability of X 0 .05 1 .10 2 .15 3 .20 4 .20 5 .15 6 .10 7 .05 a. How many units of capacity should be built to minimize the total cost of providing capacity plus lost sales? b. State a…
The Hoylake Rescue Squad receives an emergency call every 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 hours, accordingto the following probability distribution. The squad is on duty 24 hours per day, 7 daysper week:Time BetweenEmergency Calls (hr.) Probability1 .052 .103 .304 .305 .206 .051.00 Simulate the emergency calls for 3 days (note that this will require a “running,” or cumulative, hourly clock), using the random number table.
Jiminy Sweeps is the owner of Ash Kickers, Inc. a chimney cleaning business. Jiminy has just bought an expensive chimney cleaning machine. The machine uses special brushes that only fit this machine. Jiminy is uncertain how many sets of these brushes he will need during the useful life of the machine. The probability distribution for the number of brush sets needed during the life of the machine is given by the following: Brush Sets Needed Probability 20 .2 30 .6 40 .2 If Jiminy buys the brush sets as part of the machine purchase, the cost is $300 per set. If Jiminy buys them later as he needs them, the cost jumps to $500 per set. If Jiminy buys too many sets with the machine purchase and doesn’t need them, their salvage value is only $100 per set a. Draw the Payoff Table and the Opportunity Loss tables. b.Find the optimal action according to Maximax, Maximin, and Maximum Likelihood. c. Write the expressions for the EMVs. d. If the optimal EMV has a…
A chef must decide how many chocolate lava cakes to prepare for the upcoming Mother's Day Dinner special. The chef can either prepare 50, 100, or 150 lava cakes. Assume that demand for the lava cakes can be 50, 100, or 150. Each dish costs $5 to make and is priced at for $7 on the menu. Unsold cakes are donated to a nearby charity center. Assume that there is no opportunity cost for lost sales. Which alternative should be chosen based on the maximax criterion?