The copy center in the college of business at state university has become an increasingly contentious item among the college administrators. The department heads have complained to the associates dean about the long lines and waiting times for their secretaries at the copy center. They claim that it is a waste of scarce resources for the secretaries to wait in line talking when they could be doing more productive work in the office. Hanford Burris, the associate dean, says the limited operating budget will not allow the college to purchase a new copier or copiers to relieve the problem. This standoff has been going on for several years. To make her case improved copying facilities, Lauren Moore, a teacher in Operatioins Management, assigned students in her class to gather some information about the copy center as a class project. The student were to record the arrivals at the center and the length of time it took to do a copy job once the secratery actually reched a cpoy machine. In addition, the students were to describe how the copy center system worked. When the student completed the project, they turned in a report to Professor Moore. The report described the copy center as containing two machines. When secretaries arrive for a copy job, they join a queue, which looked more like milling around to the students, but they acknowledged taht each secretary knew when it was his or her own turn, and, in effect, the secretaries formed a single queue for the first available copymachin. Also, since copy jobs are assigned tasks, secretaries always stayed to do the job no matter how long the line was or how long they had to wait. They never left the queue. From the data the students gathered, Professor Moore was able to determine that secretaries arrived every eight minutes for a copy job and the arrival rate was Poisson distributed. Furhermore, She was able to determine that the average time it takes to complete a job is 12 minutes, and this is exponentially distributed. Usinfg her departments personal records and data from the university personal office. Dr. Moore determined that a secretary avergae salary was $8.50 per hour. From her academic calandar she added up the actual days in the year when the college and departamental offices were openand found ther was 247. However, as she added up working days, it occured to her that during the summer months the workload is much less, and the copy center traffic would be about half of what the average time of copying jobwould remain about the same. Prfessor Moore next called a local office supply firm to check teh price on copiers. A new copier of the type in the copy center now would cost $36,000. It would also require $8,000 per year for maintenance and would have a normal useful life of 6 years. Do you think Dr. Moore will be able to convince the associate dean that a new copy machine will be cost effective?