CASE INTRODUCTION

Rent-a-Car is one of the two car rental agencies serving a small regional airport in the U.S. Midwest. Forty percent of its customers are airline passengers and the remaining sixty percent are dwellers of the nearby college town who use rental cars for business and leisure trips. The airport is within two miles from campus and approximately six miles from the city center. It is easy to reach by car, taxi, or city bus.

You are a manager of Rent-a-Car. Your fleet consists of 72 cars, of which 47 fall into the 'economy' class and 25 in the 'luxury' class. Whenever demand for cars in some class exceeds the number of cars available, additional vehicles can be delivered from the nearest company hub in the state capital located 70 miles away. Alternatively, some customers unable to rent an economy-class car may be upgraded to a luxury-class car at no extra cost to them.

Your only competitor at this location has a more sophisticated system of car category tiers, which consist of Compact, Economy, Mid-size, and Large cars. More detailed data will be provided to you at a later stage. Upon receiving the data, you will be asked to examine various ways to improve the performance of this enterprise.