FIT3158 Business Decision Modelling

Tutorial 4 Solution
ILP, GP and MOLP

Exercise 1 (Ragsdale 6.10)

Garden City Beach hires temporary lifeguards to ensure the safety of vacationing public.
The lifeguards are assigned to work five consecutive days each week and then have two
days off. However, the city insurance company requires that the city have at least the
following numbers on duty each day of the week.
Minimum number of lifeguards required each day
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
Lifeguards 18 17 16 16 16 14 19

The city manager would like to determine the minimum number of lifeguards that will
have to be hired.
a. Formulate an ILP for this problem.
b. Implement it in a spreadsheet and solve it.
c. What is the optimal solution?
d. Several lifeguards have expressed preference to be off on Saturdays and
Sundays. What is the maximum number of lifeguards that can be off on
weekends without increasing the total number of lifeguards required?

Exercise 2 (Ragsdale 6.17)

Radford Castings can produce brake shoes on six different machines. The following
table summarizes the manufacturing costs associated with producing the brake shoes
on each machine along with the available capacity on each machine. If the company
has received an order for 1,800 brake shoes, how should it schedule these machines?
Variable Cost
Machine Fixed Cost ($) Capacity
($)
1 1,000 21 500
2 950 23 600
3 875 25 750
4 850 24 400
5 800 20 600
6 700 26 800

a) Formulate an ILP model for this problem.

b) Create a spreadsheet model for this problem and solve it.
c) What is the optimal solution?
(Hint: try using linking constraints to model the fixed costs).
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Exercise 3 (Ragsdale 6.20)
Tropicsun is a leading grower & distributor of fresh citrus products with 3 large citrus
groves scattered around central Florida in the cities of Mt Dora, Eustis and Clermont.
It currently has 275,000 bushels of citrus at the grove in Mt Dora, 400,000 bushels in
Eustis and 300,000 bushels in Clermont. It has citrus processing plants in Ocala,
Orlando and Leesburg with processing capacities to handle 200,000, 600,000 and
225,000 bushels respectively. Tropicsun contracts with a local trucking company to
transport its fruit from the groves to processing plants. The trucking company charges
a flat rate of $8 per kilometer regardless of how many bushels are transported. The
table below summarizes the distances (in kilometers) between groves and processing
plant.
Distances (in kilometers) between groves & plants:

Grove Ocala Orlando Leesburg

Mt Dora 21 50 40
Eustis 35 30 22
Clermont 55 20 25

Tropicsun wants to determine how many bushels to ship from each grove to each
processing plant to minimise the total transportation cost.
a. Formulate an ILP model for this problem
b. Create a spreadsheet model for this problem and solve it
c. What is the optimal solution?
(Hint: – try using ‘big M’).

Goal Programming and Multiple Objective Optimisation

Exercise 4 (Ragsdale 7.12)
Back to Blue Ridge hot tubs! Howie Jones needs to decide how many of the two types
Aqua-Spa and Hydro-Lux to manufacture for the next production cycle.
He buys the fibreglass hot tub shell from a local supplier and adds the pump and tubing
to this shell to create his products. The supplier has the capacity to deliver as many
shells required. Howie installs the same type of pump to both products. He will have
only 200 pumps available during the next cycle. From a production standpoint the main
difference between the two models of hot tubs is the amount of tubing and labour
required.
Aqua Spa requires 9 hours labour and 12 feet tubing.
Hydro-Lux requires 6 hours labour and 16 feet of tubing.
Howie expects to have 1566 labour hours and 2880 feet of tubing. He earns a profit of
$350 on each Aqua-Spa and $300 on each Hydro-Lux and is confident he can sell all
tubs produced.
Production of each Aqua-Spa generates 15 pounds of toxin resin and each Hydro-Lux
generates 10 pounds. Howie considers maximisation of profit half as important as
minimisation of toxin resin when deciding how many of each to produce.
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 a. Formulate an MOLP for Howie’s problem.
b. Implement it in a spreadsheet and solve it.
c. What is the optimal solution?

Exercise 5 (Ragsdale 7.1, 7.2 and 7.4)

a. What is the difference between an objective function and a goal?
b. Is there an optimal solution to a GP or MOLP problem? Explain.
c. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina decimated the gulf coast of the United States
between Mobile, Alabama and New Orleans, Louisiana. The aftermath of the
storm left the city flooded both with water and human victims. Responding to
such a disaster is a logistical nightmare and presents governmental decision
makers with an extremely difficult challenge.
1. Identify several key objectives that the decision makers managing this
problem must consider simultaneously.
2. Identify the key resources that need to be allocated.
3. Do the objectives identified conflict or compete with one another in
terms of resource usage.
4. How might techniques learned in last week’s lecture help to allocate
resources to achieve the objectives?

Solution
Exercise 1 (Ragsdale 6.10)
a. MIN X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5 + X6 + X7
ST X2 + X3 + X4 + X5 + X6  18
X3 + X4 + X5 + X6 + X7  17
X1 + X4 + X5 + X6 + X7  16
X1 + X2 + X5 + X6 + X7  16
X1 + X2 + X3 + X6 + X7  16
X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X7  14
X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5  19
Xi  0 & integer
b. See file Prb6_10.xls
c. X1 =5, X2 =2, X3 =6, X4 =2, X5 =6, X6 =2, X7 =1 (alternate optimal solutions
exist).
d. 3

Exercise 2 (Ragsdale 6.17)

a. MIN 21X1 + 23X2 + 25X3 + 24X4 + 20X5 + 26X6
+ 1000Y1 + 950Y2 + 875Y3 + 850Y4 + 800Y5 + 700Y6
ST X1 + X2 + X3 + X4 + X5 + X6 = 1800
X1 - 500 Y1  0
X2 - 600 Y2  0

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 X3 - 750 Y3  0
X4 - 400 Y4  0
X5 - 600 Y5  0
X6 - 800 Y6  0
Xi  0
All Yi are binary
b. See file: Prb6_17.xlsm
c. X1=500, X2=600, X4=100, X5=600
Total cost = $42,300

Exercise 3 (Ragsdale 6.20)

a. Let Xij = bushels (in 1000s) shipped from grove i to processing plant j
Yij = 1 if Xij  0, 0 otherwise

MIN $168 Y14 + $400 Y15 + $320 Y16

$280 Y24 + $240 Y25 + $176 Y26
$440 Y34 + $160 Y35 + $200 Y36
ST X14 + X15 + X16 = 275
X24 + X25 + X26 = 400
X34 + X35 + X36 = 300
X14 + X24 + X34  200
X15 + X25 + X35  600
X16 + X26 + X36  225
Xij - MijYij  0
Xij  0
Yij binary
Note: Mij = MIN(supply of i, capacity of j)
b. See file: Prb6_20.xls
c. The solution is: X15= 275, X24= 200, X26= 200, X35= 300,
Y15= 1, Y24= 1, Y26= 1, Y35= 1.
Minimum trucking cost = $1,016.

Exercise 4 (Ragsdale 7.12)

a. MIN Q
ST 1(66100 - 350X1 - 300X2 )  Q
2(15X1 + 10X2 - 0 )  Q
X1 + X2  200
9X1 + 6X2  1566
12X1 + 16X2  2880
X1, X2  0
b. See file: Prb7_12.xls
c. Aqua-Spas = 61, Hydro-Luxes = 134
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Exercise 5 (Ragsdale 7.1, 7.2 and 7.4)

1. Both are mathematical functions of the decision variables. However, there is no

predetermined target level for an objective function -- we want to either maximize
it or minimize it. A goal has some predetermined target level and we want to find
a solution that comes as close as possible to achieving this target.

2. A GP or MOLP has no optimal solution in the sense of an LP problem -- where

we can mechanically apply an algorithm to locate the optimal solution. Instead,
both of these procedures require that we search for an optimal or "most satisfying"
solution. This solution may differ from one decision maker to the next.

3. a. Objectives include: Maximizing lives saved, minimizing property damage,

minimizing costs, minimizing political damage, etc.
b. Resources: money, food, shelter, water, manpower, transportation services,
medical assistance.
c. Minimizing costs is at odds with the other objectives
d. MOLP could be used to help decision makers analyze the trade-offs between
the various objectives under different resource allocation scenarios.

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