IE122

Quiz No.2 (Short Bond Paper)

Due: March 18, 2019 (Monday)

1. The wheat harvesting season in the American Midwest is short, and most farmers deliver their truckloads of
wheat to a giant central storage bin within a two-week span. Because of this, wheat-filled trucks waiting to
unload and return to the fields have been known to back up for a block at the receiving bin. The central bin
is owned cooperatively, and it is to every farmer’s benefit to make the unloading/storage process as efficient
as possible. The cost of grain deterioration caused by unloading delays, the cost of truck rental, and idle
driver time are significant concerns to the cooperative members. Although farmers have difficulty
quantifying crop damage, it is easy to assign a waiting and unloading cost for truck and driver of $18 per
hour. The storage bin is open and operated 16 hours per day, 7 days per week, during the harvest season
and is capable of unloading 35 trucks per hour according to an exponential distribution. Full trucks arrive all
day long (during the hours the bin is open) at a rate of about 30 per hour, following a Poisson pattern. To
help the cooperative get a handle on the problem of lost time while trucks are waiting in line or unloading
at the bin, find the
a. queuing model used, the arrival and service rates. (unit: trucks/hr)
b. average number of trucks in the unloading system.
c. average time per truck in the system.
d. utilization factor for the bin area (the probability the service facility is being used).
e. probability that there are more than three trucks in the system at any given time.
f. total daily cost to the farmers of having their trucks tied up in the unloading process.

2. The Atlantic Coast Shipping Company has a warehouse terminal in Spartanburg, South Carolina. The capacity
of each terminal dock is three trucks. As trucks enter the terminal, the drivers receive numbers; and when
one of the three dock spaces becomes available, the truck with the lowest number enters the vacant dock.
Truck arrivals are Poisson distributed, and the unloading and loading times (service times) are exponentially
distributed. The average arrival rate at the terminal is five trucks per hour, and the average service rate per
dock is two trucks per hour.
a. Determine the queuing model used, the arrival and service rates. (unit: trucks/hr)
b. Determine the operating characteristics of this queuing problem.
c. The management of the shipping company is considering adding extra employees and equipment
to improve the average service rate per terminal dock to 2.4 trucks per hour. It would cost the
company $18,000 per year to achieve this improved service. Management estimates that it will
increase its profit by $750 per year for each minute it is able to reduce a truck's waiting time.
Determine whether management should make the investment.

3. Janine San Pedro is a nurse on the evening shift from 10:00 P.M. to 6:00 A.M. at Community Hospital. She
has 15 patients for whom she is responsible in her area. She averages 0.25 calls from each of her patients
every hour, on average (Poisson distributed), and she must spend an average of 10 minutes (negative
exponential distribution) with each patient who calls.
a. Determine the queuing model used, the arrival and service rates. (unit: patients/hr)
b. Determine the operating characteristics of this queuing problem.
c. Nurse Janine has indicated to her shift supervisor that, although she has not kept records, she
believes her patients must wait about 10 minutes, on average, for her to respond, and she has
requested that her supervisor assign a second nurse to her area. The supervisor believes 10
minutes is too long for a patient to wait, but she does not want her nurses to be idle more than
45% of the time. Determine what the supervisor should do. (Note: If the average waiting time is
greater than or equal to 10 minutes and the probability that the nurse is not serving anyone is
less than or equal to 45%, then the supervisor should hire another nurse.)