OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT

Gokuldham Society: A case study on transportation planning

Group No. 5
Ananya Singh
Darla Deny Sai Abhishek
Mohit Jain
Rajulapati Deepthi Sree
Shubham Sangwan

Assignment

Question 1: What baffled Mr. Pulkit Mathur, the Chairman of Gokuldham

Society?
Answer 1: Gokuldham society was located at a large distance from the main
city, the residents were deprived of the basic amenities. So, they started their
own transport facility by pooling their money. But the due to certain
operational inefficiencies, the society was incurring high costs for its transport
facilities. Pulkit Mathur studied the data and realized that the expenses on
shuttle bus services constituted a major portion of the total transportation
cost. Also, he noted that on several occasions, the shuttle buses did not run on
full capacity resulting in high operational costs. So, he wanted to decide the
optimal way of designing the transportation setup for the society.
Question 2: What alternatives will you propose to resolve the problem faced
by Mr. Mathur?

Answer 2: The following alternatives can be considered to resolve the problem

faced by Mr. Mathur:

1. To change the schedule of the shuttle service

2. To deploy cars and Force traveller instead of shuttle bus, whenever
prudent, so as to cut down the fuel costs
3. To give more weightage to average number of passengers as a
quantitative parameter in decision making.
4. To give more weightage to maximum number of passengers as a
quantitative parameter in decision making

Question 3: What solution, Prof. Sachan should propose to solve the

problem? Describe step by step.

Answer 3: The following steps will be taken by Prof. Sachan in order to

acknowledge the problem:

1.Calculating the expenditure of each vehicle on the basis of its mileage

and the fuel cost
2.Calculating the average and maximum number of passengers on any
given day
3.Rescheduling the shuttle bus timings in accordance to the above-
mentioned calculations
4.The selection of vehicle is done on the basis of the average number of
passengers on any given day
5. The days on which the number of passengers exceeds the average, we
will switch to other vehicles accordingly

In the attached excel file to this solution, it is evident that using

alternative vehicles other than Shuttle service reduces the cost
considerably for all the months.

Average no. of Vehicle used Cost for round trip

passengers per day (Rs.)
1 to 6 Car 150
7 to 12 Force Traveller 195
12 to 18 Car + Force Traveller 345
Above 18 Shuttle Bus 375

Question 4: What will happen to the solution methodology if

(1)The number of residents in the society increases every year?
(2)When the data set increases to five years?

Answer 4:
(1) With the increase in the number of passengers our average will
change accordingly and so on the basis of the mileage of vehicle and
the fuel cost we can reschedule the round trips for the passengers
accordingly. Also, since the average doesn’t get affected by increase
in number of parameters that much, the shuttle bus cost will still
remain much more than the cost of alternative vehicles. So, our
solution will stand to remain the same.

(2) If the data set increases to five years we can use the forecasting
function in MS Excel in order to predict the average number of
passengers in the foreseeable future and calculate the costs
accordingly.