Consider a department store that must make weekly shipments of a ...

[biggirl4568]

Consider a department store that must make weekly shipments of a certain product from two different warehouses to four different stores.
 a. How could a quantitative approach to decision making be used to solve this problem?
  b. What would be the uncontrollable inputs for which data must be gathered?
  c. What would be the decision variables of the mathematical model? the objective function? the constraints?
  d. Is the model deterministic or stochastic?
  e. Suggest assumptions that could be made to simplify the model.

Question 2

Last school year, the student body of a local university consisted of 30 freshmen, 24 sophomores, 26 juniors, and 20 seniors. A sample of 300 students taken from this year's student body showed the following number of students in each classification. Freshmen 83 Sophomores 68 Juniors 85 Seniors 64 We are interested in determining whether or not there has been a significant change in the classifications between the last school year and this school year. The expected number of freshmen is
 a. 83
  b. 90
  c. 30
  d. 10

[chereeb]

Answer to Question 1

a. A quantitative approach to decision making can provide a systematic way to determine a minimum shipping cost from the warehouses to the stores.
b. Fixed costs and variable shipping costs; the demand each week at each store; the supplies each week at each warehouse.
c. Decision variables--how much to ship from each warehouse to each store; objective function--minimize total shipping costs; constraints--meet the demand at the stores without exceeding the supplies at the warehouses.
d. Stochastic--weekly demands fluctuate as do weekly supplies; transportation costs could vary depending upon the amount shipped, other goods sent with a shipment, etc.
e. Make the model deterministic by assuming fixed shipping costs per item, demand is constant at each store each week, and weekly supplies in the warehouses are constant.

Answer to Question 2

B