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Exam 8 December 2015, questions and answers

Operations and Logistics Management (Rijksuniversiteit Groningen)

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Student name : _____________________________

Student number :
Version : Intermediate Exam Version 1

Signature : _____________________________

Operations & Logistics Management

Mid-term Exam
Supply Chain Management & Logistics
Process Analysis & Capacity Management
Service Processes and Queuing

Tuesday, December 8th., 2015

14:00-16:00 hrs

Read this before you start:

During this intermediate exam you are required to hand over your university registration
card (or an official identity card, e.g. passport etc.) so that we can check your student
number against the list of registered students.
Each student needs to separately hand in both his/her signed exercises and his/her
signed answers form and is required to sign the list of registered candidates.
You may not leave the examination room until 45 minutes after the start of the
examination and 15 minutes before the end of the examination.
Multiple versions of this intermediate exam exist.
Use of a calculator is allowed (according to the rules of the faculty).
A dictionary is NOT allowed to be used during the exam.
All electronic equipment (e.g. mobile phones, laptops and MP3 players), except for your
calculator, must remain switched off and stowed away during the full length of the topic
exam.
Do not round intermediate answers. For example, if you make calculations for waiting
line models, do not round the values of and before you fill out the formula.
At the end of this exam, you can find an appendix containing some formulas for queuing
systems. You can use this appendix if relevant to the question.
Always select the best answer. There is ONLY one correct answer for each question.
The total number of points equals 100. Your grade = number of points scored divided by
10.
Questions about the intermediate exam can be asked during one of the consultation hours (see
Nestor), not during the exam. If you believe there is something wrong with one or more
questions, you are requested to state this in the text box at the end of the exam.

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*-questions (relatively simple max 20 points)

Question 1 (2 points)

Which of the following activities is, according to Jacobs & chase not a separate
operations activity at a car manufacturer?
A. Sourcing of components
B. Planning of production of cars
C. Inspecting cars
D. Delivering cars

Question 2 (2 points)

A welding machine at a construction firm is in repair 3% of the time, used 23% of its time,.

What is the efficiency of the use of this machine?

Actual output/effective capacity = 23/97 = 24%

A. 0.13
B. 0.39
C. 0.24
D. 0.29

Question 3 (2 points)
The department that cuts pieces of leather from which car seat are made has a productivity of
60% when only the material is considered. Management would like to improve this
productivity and considers automated machines equipped with image processing software that
would replace the manual operations. The supplier of the software guarantees that the amount
of waste material can be reduced by 15%:

What will the new productivity (in %) if the shipyard decides to the new software (and
the promise of the software supplier holds true)?

Productivity is output/input. Currently 40 is wasted, this is reduced to 85% of 40% = 34 %

New productivity is 66% (66% of input is output)
A. 69,0 %
B. 75,0 %
C. 77,5 %
D. 66,0 %

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Question 4 (2 points)
At the mortgage department at GroUt-bank, it takes 20 minutes to handling a loan request of a
customer. The bank has six counters where only loan requests are handled. The arrival rate of
the loan requests is 12 per hour.

What is the utilization of the mortgage department at GroUt?

Total capacity =18, =12. 12/18 = 2/3

A. 2/3
B. 1/2
C. 1/3
D. None of the above.

Question 5 (2 points)

Simulation will enable a user to:

Slides 37- 40 lecture 3
A. optimize a real-world situation.
B. study the properties and operating characteristics of a real-world situation.
C. to draw conclusions and make decisions according to calculations.
D. all of the above.

Question 6 (2 points)

Deterministic Performance Estimation will enable the user to:

Slide 45 lecture 3
A. Get rough estimates of performance
B. Get precise estimates of performance
C. Get exact performance figures
D. None of the above

Question 7 (2 points)

In queuing models the negative exponential probability distribution is commonly used to

describe the
A. arrival rate
B. service rate
C. time between arrivals
D. service time

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Question 8 (2 points)

At a help desk clients arrive at a rate of 30 per hour, and the average service time is 12
minutes.
What are and ?
Definitions of and
A. = 30, = 12
B. = 30, =5
C. = 2, =5
D. = 2, = 12

Question 9 (2 points)

Consider an M/M/1 system.

What can be said about Ws?
Ws is time in system (including service time) Wq is just time in queue
A. It is equal to Wq plus the arrival rate.
B. It is equal to Wq plus the inter-arrival time.
C. It is equal to Wq plus the service time.
D. It is equal to Wq minus the inter-arrival time.

Question 10 (2 points)
Consider the following statements about the combination of processes in a system
What statement is correct?
Slides of double pendulum; slide 34 lecture 3
A. Combination of simple behaviors such as such as a sequence of service processes will not
result in complex behavior.
B. Combination of simple behaviors such as such as a sequence of service processes will
result in complex behavior.
C. Combination of simple behaviors such as such as a sequence of service processes can
easily result in complex behavior.
D. Combination of simple behaviors such as such as a sequence of service processes cannot
result in complex behavior.

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**-questions (moderately difficult Max. 50 points)

Question 11 (5 points)

Interarrival
time: Out
4 minutes
Process 1 Process 2
Time required: Time required:
exactly 4 minutes per product exactly 2.5 minutes per product

Consider the production system depicted above.

What is the estimate for the Work-In-Progress if it is calculated with the formula
n

X
i 1
i i

=15/hr
1=15/hr; =1
2=24/hr; =0,625
= 1.625 (batch size in all cases 1

A. 1.625 products
B. 6.500 products
C. 2.000 products
D. 0,625 products

Question 12 (5 points)

Interarrival
time: Out
5 minutes

Process 1 Process 2 Process 3

3 parallel operators 1 machine 2 parallel operators
Time required Time required: Time required per
per product: exactly 6 minutes product:
Normal distribution (15, ) exactly 10 minutes
minutes

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Consider the process depicted above.

What is the departure rate of this system?
Bottleneck determines capacity determines departure rate.
=12/hr
1=12/hr; (3 x 4)
2=10/hr; bottleneck
3=12/hr
A. 10.0 products/hr
B. 12.0 products/hr
C. 8.72 products/hr
D. none of the above

Question 13 (5 points)

Interarrival
time: Out
7 minutes

Process 1
Process 2 Process 3
1 operator
(3 parallel machines) 1 operator
Time required
Time required Time required
per product:
per product: per product:
Normal(5, )
11 minutes Normal (4, 1/30)
minutes
minutes

Consider the process depicted above.

What is the bottleneck?
=60/7/hr =8.6
1=60/5/hr =12
2=3*60/11/hr =16
3=60/4/hr =15

A. Arrival process
B. Process 1
C. Process 2
D. Process 3

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Question 14 (5 points)
Consider the process depicted below.

30 sec/job
Activity
1a 30sec/job
IAT = 20 sec
Activity 2
1 min/job
Activity Batch size: 10
1b Set -up: 3 min

Assume that:
Jobs have an inter-arrival time (IAT) of 40 seconds. 3/4 goes to 1a and the rest goes to 1b;
There are two parallel machines at Activity 1, one takes 45 seconds per job, the other one
takes 1 minute per job;
Activity 2 is performed by a machine that has a set-up time of 3 minutes and a processing
time of 30 seconds per job. The batch size used is 20 and jobs are executed sequentially.

What is the departure rate of this process?

Figures in picture are wrong. During the exam it was announced that the text must be
followed and the figures in the picture disregarded.
=90/hr
1a=67,5/hr 75%
1b=22.5/hr 25%

1a=80/hr
1b=60/hr
1=140/hr
2=(20 x 30 +180)/20 = 39/hr
Bottleneck is arrival rate

A. 180 jobs per hour

B. 165 jobs per hour
C. 90 jobs per hour
D. 75 jobs per hour

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Question 15 (5 points)
Container ships delivering containers to a small port with just a single dock arrive 24 hours a
day according to the Poisson probability distribution. The time required to load/unload a truck
is exactly one shift of 8 hours. The mean arrival rate is 2.5 ships per day.
What is the average time a ship spends in the system?
MD1 system. Ws= (2-) / 2(-)
=2.5/day
= 3/day
Ws= (6-2.5) / 6(3-2.5) = 3.5/3 = 1.17 days = 28 hours

Correct answer not present. Question will be removed and students compensated (8 questions
of 6.25 points rather than 10 questions of 5 points).

A. 15.3 hrs (closest)

B. 2 days
C. 2.0 hrs
D. 0,64 hrs

Question 16 (5 points)
Consider an ATM where on average 30 customers arrive per hour (Poisson arrivals). The
average service time equals 1.5 minute (negative exponentially distributed).
How long do customers on average have to wait in the queue?
MM1 system
Wq= / (-) = 30/40(40=30) = 30/400 = 3/40 hr = 430
A. 0,00 min
B. 0.67 hrs
C. 6 min.
D. 4 min 30 sec.

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Question 17 (5 points)
Consider the process depicted below.

Activity
1a
Activity
3a

Activity Activity 2
1b
Activity
3b

Activity
1c

Assume that:
The inter-arrival time of products is 4 minutes;
There are three identical parallel machines at Activity 1, each takes a processing time of
20 minutes
Question 6 per product;
There is a single operator at Activity 2 who has a capacity of processing 10 products per
hour;
There are 2 parallel operators at Activity 3; both take 10 minutes per product.
What is the throughput time of this process?
20 min (activity 1) + 6 min. (activity 2) + 10 min (activity 3) = 36 min.
A. 36 minutes
B. 17,7 minutes
C. 44 minutes
D. 48 minutes

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Question 18 (5 points)
The emergency desk of the first aid station receives requests for medical assistance. Assume
that on a Friday evening a Poisson probability distribution with a mean rate of 20 requests per
hour can be used to describe the arrival pattern and that service times follow the exponential
probability distribution with a mean service time of 3 minutes 15 seconds (3.25 min.).
What is the probability that a new arrival has to wait for service?

> : hence in steady state there is always a queue (=20, =60/3.25)

A. 1.00
B. 0.5
C. 0.92
D. 0.85

Question 19 (5 points)
A post office has one employee working according to negative exponentially distributed
service times with an average service rate of 1.2 minutes per customer. The arrival rate
(Poisson arrivals) equals 30 customers per hour.
What is the probability of having exactly 3 customers in the post office?
MM1-system
=50/hr
= 30/hr
p3= (1-30/50)(3/5)3 = 2/5*3/5*3/5*3/5 = 54/625 = 0,0864
A. 0.144
B. 0.422
C. 0.086
D. 0.563

Question 20 (5 points)
Things arrive at a service center on average every two minutes (Poisson distributed).
Whatever is done to the things is not clear, but it takes 1 minute 40 seconds.
What will be the average number of things in the center?

If MM1 system: Ls = /(-) = 5

If MD1 system: Ls = (2-) / 2 (- ) = 2.91
A. 2,0
B. 2,5
C. 4,0
D. 5,0
However, question not formulated clearly. Question will be removed and students
compensated (8 questions of 6.25 points rather than 10 questions of 5 points).

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***-questions (exam questions max 30 points)

Question 21 (7.5 points)

Consider the process depicted above. Suppose that Process 1 has the same batch size as that of
Process 2.
What is the minimum batch size to ensure that neither process 1 nor process 2 forms the
bottleneck?

Processing time of either process 1 or process 2 should be less than 4 min.

Processing time per item:
P1: (3x+10)/x < 4 : x > 18
P1: (2x+11)/x < 4 : x > 6

A. 5
B. 6
C. 15
D. 18

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Question 22 (7.5 points)

Interarrival
time (of
individual
products):
Out
4 minutes
Process 1 Process 2
Time required: Time required:
3 minutes per product 2 minutes per product
Batch size: 18 Batch size: x
Setup time per batch: 16 minutes Setup time per batch: 11 minutes

Consider the process depicted above. What is the minimum batch size for process 2 to ensure
that process 2 will not be the bottleneck?

P1: (3 x 10 + 16) / 18 = 70/18 = 3.889

IAT = 4
P2 < 4
(2x+11) / x < 4 (see Q21) 11/x<2, x>5.5; x >= 6
A. 2
B. 4
C. 6
D. 8

Question 23 (7.5 points)

The business model of a young start-up company is based on the earnings generated through
premium rate phone numbers. The income from its 0900 number the main source of income
for the company as the customer is charged 5 per minute that the line remains open (waiting
for the operator and actually receiving information). On average 9 customers call every hour
(Poisson distributed). There is one employee in the call centre at all times, who needs on
average 5 minutes (negative exponentially distributed) to listen to and answer the question of
a customer. The employee is paid 35 per hour.
How much money is FreeServices earning on a daily basis (a day is 24 hours)?
FreeServices receives 9 X 24 customers per day = 196 customers /day
On average a customer remains in the system for Ws hours = 1 / (-) (MM1-system) = 1/3
hour = 20 minutes. On average a customer generates 100 euro. With 196 customers per day
this makes 19.600,- 24 hours of wages amounts to 840,- Profit or earnings is irrelevant for
the correct answer.

A. less than 100

B. 100 or more, but less than 1000
C. 1000 or more, but less than 5000
D. 5000 or more.

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Question 24 (7.5 points)

Consider a production system consisting of three stages. A product arrives at the production
system every 5.2 minutes to be processed. Each product must visit all three stages. Products
first go to process 1 which consists of 4 employees working in parallel. An employee can
process a product in 15 minutes. Next, the product goes to process 2, where 3 parallel
operating machines are available. A machine at process 2 needs 13 minutes per product.
Finally, the product goes to a checking station. The checking station is manned by one person
(a different person than the employees at process 1), who needs 4.9 minutes per product for a
quality check.
What is the WIP of this system?
=60/5.2 (bottleneck)
1 total=16/hr (4*4) 1=11.54/16 (Batch size X = 4) 2.85
2 total=13.85/hr 2=11.54/13.85 (Batch sixe X = 3) 2.5
3 =14.7/hr 3=11.54/14.7 (Batch size X = 1) 0.78

2.85 2.5 + 0.78 = 6.13

A. Less than 3 products.

B. 3 or more, but less than 10 products
C. 10 or more, but less than 20 products
D. 20 products or more

Textbox for observations about the exam and/or exam questions

Appendix: a few formulas

Calculating WIP:
L = W
n

X
i 1
i i

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WIP =

M/M/1 formulas

LS

1
WS

2
Lq
( )

Wq
( )

k 1 n

Pn k Pn 1

M/D/1 formulas
(2 )
LS
2( )

2
WS
2( )

2
Lq
2( )

Wq
2( )

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