Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment

Submitted to: Prof. Sambit Mukherjee XIM, Bhubaneswar

Section B Group 9: Braj Sundar Das Debashish Upadhyay Manish Kumar Swain Rupmalini Sahu Smruti Sankar Lenka Swati Agrawal

U111072 U111075 U111087 U111097 U111111 U111114

Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment 2011

Problem Statement:

A post office requires different numbers of full-time and part-time employees on different days of the week. The number of hours of work required to be done each day is given in the table below:

Day 1 Day 2 Day 3 Day 4 Day 5 Day 6 Day 7

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday Sunday TOTAL:

Hours of Work 136 104 120 152 112 128 88 840

Union rules state that each full-time employee must work five consecutive days and then receive two days off. For example, an employee who works on Monday to Friday must be off on Saturday and Sunday. A full-time employee works for 8 hours per day and a part-time employee works for 4 hours per day. The post office may meet its daily labour requirements by using both full-time and part-time employees.

During each week, a full-time employee works 8 hours a day for 5 consecutive days, and a part-time employee works 4 hours a day for five consecutive days. A full-time employee costs the post office $15 per hour, whereas a part-time employee (with reduced fringe benefits) costs the post office only $10 per hour. Union requirements limit part-time labour to 25% of weekly labour requirements.

Formulate an LP to minimize the post offices weekly labour costs.

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Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment 2011

Solution:
Variables: We have defined the following variables: Pi = Number of part-time employees beginning work on day i Fi = Number of full-time employees beginning work on day i For example, F1 is the number of full-time workers beginning work on Monday. These people work Monday to Friday.

Assumptions: Weve assumed that on a given day, the number of full-time or part-time employees beginning their work can be zero.

Objective Function: We have to minimize the total weekly cost. For a full-time employee joining on Monday, the cost would be: 8 hours X $15 per hour = $120 per day per employee If we calculate the total cost of an employee for the whole week (5 working days), the cost would be: $120 per day X 5 days = $600 per week per employee Similarly, for a part-time employee, it would be: 4 hours X $10 per hour X 5 days = $200 per week per employee Hence, we need to minimize the total weekly cost given by, Total weekly cost = (F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7)*600 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*200 Where, Total number of full-time employees = F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7 Total number of part-time employees = P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7

Constraints:

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Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment 2011

The post office must ensure that enough employees are working on each day of the week to cover the required hours of work. For example, at least 136 hours of work should be done on Monday. Who is working on Monday? Everybody except the employees who started working on Tuesday or on Wednesday (they get, respectively, Sunday and Monday, and Monday and Tuesday off). This means that the number of employee hours for Monday (along with the constraint) is: (F1 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7) * 8 + (P1 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)* 4 >= 136 <for Monday>

We have a restriction as given by the Union requirements, that limits part-time labour to 25% of weekly labour requirement, which is 840/4 = 210 hours. Total number of hours worked by part-time employees is given by: Total number of part-time employees X Hours worked each day X number of working days per week (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7) Part-time employees X 4 hours per day X 5 days per week Thus we have another constraint to restrict the total number of hours worked by the parttime employees as: (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7) X 20 <=210 We have the following sign restrictions: Pi >= 0 (i = 1, 2, 3... 7), and Fi >= 0 (i = 1, 2, 3... 7).

Formulation of the Post Office problem: Adding similar constraints for the other six days of the week and the sign restrictions yields the following formulation of the post office problem: Minimize Z = (F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7)*600 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*200 (Weekly employee cost)
s.t. (F1 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 136 (F1 + F2 + F5 + F6 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P2 + P5 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 104 (F1 + F2 + F3 + F6 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 120 (F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P7)*4 >= 152 (F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F5 )*8 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 )*4 >= 112 ( F2 + F3 + F4 + F5 + F6 )*8 + ( P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 )*4 >= 128 (Monday) (Tuesday) (Wednesday) (Thursday) (Friday) (Saturday)

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Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment 2011

( F3 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7)*8 + ( (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7) X 20 <=210 P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 88 (Sunday) (25% work hour constraint by Union)

Lingo LP Solver: The LP problem as entered in the LINGO software is as below:

!Objective function is to minimize the weekly cost; MIN = (F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7)*600 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*200; !A minimum of 136 hours of work needs to be done on Monday and similarly for other days; (F1 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 136; (F1 + F2 + F5 + F6 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P2 + P5 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 104; (F1 + F2 + F3 + F6 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 120; (F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F7)*8 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P7)*4 >= 152; (F1 + F2 + F3 + F4 + F5)*8 + (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5)*4 >= 112; (F2 + F3 + F4 + F5 + F6)*8 + (P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6)*4 >= 128; (F3 + F4 + F5 + F6 + F7)*8 + (P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*4 >= 88; !A mamximum of 25% work can be done by part-time workers; (P1 + P2 + P3 + P4 + P5 + P6 + P7)*20 <= 210; !The number of employees working on any day can not be negative. !The sign restrictions are as below: ; F1 >= 0; F7 >= 0; P1 >= 0; P7 >= 0; F2 >= 0; F2 >= 0; F3 >= 0; P3 >= 0; F4 >= 0; P4 >= 0; F5 >= 0; P5 >= 0; F6 >= 0; P6 >= 0; !Monday; !Tuesday; !Wednesday; !Thursday; !Friday; !Saturday; !Sunday;

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Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment 2011

After entering the problem in the Lingo Software, we had the following figure:

Figure 1: Input to the LINGO LP Solver

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Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment 2011

Solving the LP Problem gave the following result:

Figure 2: Result of the Post Office LP Problem

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Operations Research: Linear Programming Assignment 2011

Solution: A summary of the result for our LP problem: Minimum weekly employee cost for the Post Office: $12350 Number of Full-time Number of Part-time employees beginning employees beginning their work their work Monday 6.000 0.0 Tuesday 5.333 0.0 Wednesday 0.000 0.0 Thursday 2.083 10.5 Friday 0.000 0.0 Saturday 3.333 0.0 Sunday 0.333 0.0

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