Within your analysis on linear programming applied at Acme Mexico City, address the following:
•What is your recommended low-cost (not necessarily the minimum cost) customer service employee daily assignment schedule?
•What are your underlying assumptions and any qualitative factors that you believe are involved?
•How might non-typical days affect the schedule?
Provide a sensitivity analysis that shows how relaxation of the 50% constraint on the hours worked by part-time customer service employees might affect the daily personnel costs.
The following information is provided for your use in this linear programming analysis:
To the extent permitted by local law, each Acme Home Improvements store, including Acme Mexico City, is open from 7 am - 11 pm every day.
Acme Mexico City advance planners in North Carolina have provided the following table, which identifies the minimum number of customer service employees estimated to be needed on the floor of the store each hour of a typical work day:
|
Customer Service Employees
|
|
Time Period
|
Minimum number needed on the floor
|
|
7 am - 8 am
|
10
|
|
8 am - 9 am
|
12
|
|
9 am - 10 am
|
18
|
|
10 am - 11 am
|
22
|
|
11 am - 12 pm
|
22
|
|
12 pm - 1 pm
|
26
|
|
1 pm - 2 pm
|
26
|
|
2 pm - 3 pm
|
26
|
|
3 pm - 4 pm
|
26
|
|
4 pm - 5 pm
|
26
|
|
5 pm - 6 pm
|
28
|
|
6 pm - 7 pm
|
28
|
|
7 pm - 8 pm
|
24
|
|
8 pm - 9 pm
|
22
|
|
9 pm - 10 pm
|
14
|
|
10 pm - 11 pm
|
12
|
In the interest of cost control, the planners have also imposed a not-to-exceed maximum of 30 customer service employees on the floor at any time.
Full-time customer service employees at AMC work a 9 hour shift (8 hours of work plus a 1 hour meal break) either from 7 am to 4 pm or from 2 pm to 11 pm. Workers on the 7-4 shift are assigned an hour-long lunch break at either 11 am or 12 noon. Workers on the 2-11 shift are assigned an hour-long dinner break at either 5 pm or 6 pm.
Part-time customer service employees work four consecutive hours per day and their shifts can start any hour between 7 am and 7 pm. They receive no meal breaks.
By company policy, which is consistent with Mexican labor law, the company limits the hours worked by part-time customer service employees to 50% of the day's total scheduled hours.
Part-time customer service employees earn $500 per day, and full-time customer service employees earn $1100 per day in salary and benefits (here, $ = Moneda Nacional, i.e., the Mexican peso).
You are expected to analyze the proposed optimal schedule or any other schedule you recommend in a managerial perspective.
You must discuss limitations of the underlying assumptions (e.g., uncertainty of model parameters, linearity etc.) to formulate the linear program.
Attachment:- ProposedAcmeMexicoCityEmployee-Assignment-Schedule.rar