AcafeteriaatAll-StateUniversityhasonespecialdishitserves like clockwork every Thursday at noon. This suppos-edlytastydishisacasserolethatcontainssautedonions,boiled sliced potatoes, green beans, and cream of mushroomsoup. Unfortunately, students fail to see the special quality ofthisdish, andtheyloathinglyrefertoitastheKillerCasse-role. The students reluctantly eat the casserole, however, be-cause the cafeteria provides only a limited selection of dishesfor Thursdays lunch (namely, the casserole).Maria Gonzalez, the cafeteria manager, is looking to cutcosts for the coming year, and she believes that one sure wayto cut costs is to buy less expensive and perhaps lower-qualityingredients.Becausethecasseroleisaweeklystapleofthecafeteria menu, she concludes that if she can cut costs on theingredientspurchasedforthecasserole, shecansignificantlyreduce overall cafeteria operating costs. She therefore decidesto invest time in determining how to minimize the costs of thecasserole while maintaining nutritional and taste requirements.Maria focuses on reducing the costs of the two main in-gredientsinthecasserole, thepotatoesandgreenbeans.These two ingredients are responsible for the greatest costs,nutritional content, and taste of the dish.Maria buys the potatoes and green beans from a whole-salereachweek.Potatoescost$0.40perpound, andgreenbeans cost $1.00 per pound.All-StateUniversityhasestablishednutritionalrequire-ments that each main dish of the cafeteria must meet. Specif-ically, thetotalamountofthedishpreparedforallthestu-dents for one meal must contain 180 grams (g) of protein, 80milligrams (mg) of iron, and 1,050 mg of vitamin C. (Thereare 453.6 g in 1 lb and 1,000 mg in 1 g.) For simplicity whenplanning, Mariaassumesthatonlythepotatoesandgreenbeanscontributetothenutritionalcontentofthecasserole.BecauseMariaworksatacutting-edgetechnologicaluniversity, she has been exposed to the numerous resourceson the World Wide Web. She decides to surf the Web to findthe nutritional content of potatoes and green beans. Her re-search yields the following nutritional information about thetwo ingredients:Potatoes Green BeansProtein 1.5 g per 100 g 5.67 g per 10 ouncesIron 0.3 mg per 100 g 3.402 mg per 10 ouncesVitamin C 12 mg per 100 g 28.35 mg per 10 ounces(There are 28.35 g in 1 ounce.)EdsonBranner, thecafeteriacookwhoissurprisinglyconcernedabouttaste, informsMariathatanediblecasse-role must contain at least a six to five ratio in the weight ofpotatoes to green beans.Given the number of students who eat in the cafeteria,Mariaknowsthatshemustpurchaseenoughpotatoesandgreen beans to prepare a minimum of 10 kilograms (kg) ofcasserole each week. (There are 1,000 g in 1 kg.) Again forsimplicityinplanning, sheassumesthatonlythepotatoesand green beans determine the amount of casserole that canbe prepared. Maria does not establish an upper limit on theamount of casserole to prepare, since she knows all leftoverscan be served for many days thereafter or can be used cre-atively in preparing other dishes.(a) DeterminetheamountofpotatoesandgreenbeansMariashouldpurchaseeachweekforthecasseroletominimizetheingredientcostswhilemeetingnutritional, taste, anddemandrequirements.Before she makes her final decision, Maria plans to explorethefollowingquestionsindependentlyexceptwhereother-wise indicated.(b) Mariaisnotveryconcernedaboutthetasteofthecasserole;she is only concerned about meeting nutritional requirementsADDITIONALCASESI CASE3.2 CUTTINGCAFETERIACOSTS1hil61217_ch03_case.qxd5/12/0417:11Page 1andcuttingcosts.ShethereforeforcesEdsontochangetherecipe to allow for only at least a one to two ratio in the weightofpotatoestogreenbeans.Giventhenewrecipe, determinethe amount of potatoes and green beans Maria should purchaseeach week.(c) Maria decides to lower the iron requirement to 65 mg since shedeterminesthattheotheringredients, suchastheonionsandcreamofmushroomsoup, alsoprovideiron.Determinetheamount of potatoes and green beans Maria should purchase eachweek given this new iron requirement.(d) Marialearnsthatthewholesalerhasasurplusofgreenbeansandisthereforesellingthegreenbeansforalowerpriceof$0.50 per lb. Using the same iron requirement from part (c) andthenewpriceofgreenbeans, determinetheamountofpota-toes and green beans Maria should purchase each week.(e) Maria decides that she wants to purchase lima beans instead ofgreen beans since lima beans are less expensive and provide agreater amount of protein and iron than green beans. Maria againwields her absolute power and forces Edson to change the recipeto include lima beans instead of green beans. Maria knows shecan purchase lima beans for $0.60 per lb from the wholesaler.She also knows that lima beans contain 22.68 g of protein per10ouncesoflimabeans, 6.804mgofironper10ouncesoflimabeans, andnovitaminC.Usingthenewcostandnutri-tional content of lima beans, determine the amount of potatoesand lima beans Maria should purchase each week to minimizethe ingredient costs while meeting nutritional, taste, and demandrequirements. The nutritional requirements include the reducediron requirement from part (c).(f) Will Edson be happy with the solution in part (e)? Why or whynot?(g) An All-State student task force meets during Body AwarenessWeek and determines that All-State Universitys nutritional re-quirementsforironaretoolaxandthatthoseforvitaminCare too stringent. The task force urges the university to adoptapolicythatrequireseachservingofanentretocontainatleast 120 mg of iron and at least 500 mg of vitamin C. Usingpotatoes and lima beans as the ingredients for the dish and us-ing the new nutritional requirements, determine the amount ofpotatoesandlimabeansMariashouldpurchaseeachweek.2 ADDITIONAL CASES1This case is based on an actual project completed by a team of masters students in the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems and OperationsResearch at Stanford University.I CASE 3.3 STAFFING A CALL CENTER1California Childrens Hospital has been receiving numerouscustomer complaints because of its confusing, decentralizedappointment and registration process. When customers wanttomakeappointmentsorregisterchildpatients, theymustcontacttheclinicordepartmenttheyplantovisit.Severalproblems exist with this current strategy. Parents do not al-waysknowthemostappropriateclinicordepartmenttheymustvisittoaddresstheirchildrensailments.Theythere-fore spend a significant amount of time on the phone beingtransferred from clinic to clinic until they reach the most ap-propriateclinicfortheirneeds.Thehospitalalsodoesnotpublishthephonenumbersofallclinicanddepartments,and parents must therefore invest a large amount of time indetective work to track down the correct phone number. Fi-nally, the various clinics and departments do not communi-cate with each other. For example, when a doctor schedulesa referral with a colleague located in another department orclinic, that department or clinic almost never receives wordofthereferral. Theparentmustcontactthecorrectdepart-ment or clinic and provide the needed referral information.In efforts to reengineer and improve its appointment andregistrationprocess, thechildrenshospitalhasdecidedtocentralize the process by establishing one call center devotedexclusively to appointments and registration. The hospital iscurrentlyinthemiddleoftheplanningstagesforthecallcenter. Lenny Davis, the hospital manager, plans to operatethecallcenterfrom7A.M. to9P.M. duringtheweekdays.Severalmonthsago, thehospitalhiredanambitiousmanagementconsultingfirm, CreativeChaosConsultants,to forecast the number of calls the call center would receiveeach hour of the day. Since all appointment and registration-relatedcallswouldbereceivedbythecallcenter, thecon-sultants decided that they could forecast the calls at the callcenterbytotalingthenumberofappointmentandregistra-tion-relatedcallsreceivedbyallclinicsanddepartments.Theteammembersvisitedalltheclinicsanddepartments,wheretheydiligentlyrecordedeverycallrelatingtoap-pointmentsandregistration.Theythentotaledthesecallsand altered the totals to account for calls missed during datacollection. They also altered totals to account for repeat callsthat occurred when the same parent called the hospital manytimesbecauseoftheconfusionsurroundingthedecentral-ized process. Creative Chaos Consultants determined the av-eragenumberofcallsthecallcentershouldexpectduringeachhourofaweekday.Thefollowingtableprovidestheforecasts.hil61217_ch03_case.qxd5/12/0417:11Page 2CASE 3.4 PROMOTING A BREAKFAST CEREAL 3Work Shift Average Number of Calls7 A.M.9 A.M. 40 calls per hour9 A.M.11 A.M. 85 calls per hour11 A.M.1 P.M. 70 calls per hour1 P.M.3 P.M. 95 calls per hour3 P.M.5 P.M. 80 calls per hour5 P.M.7 P.M. 35 calls per hour7 P.M.9 P.M. 10 calls per hourAftertheconsultantssubmittedtheseforecasts, Lennybe-cameinterestedinthepercentageofcallsfromSpanishspeakers since the hospital services many Spanish patients.Lenny knows that he has to hire some operators who speakSpanish to handle these calls. The consultants performed fur-ther data collection and determined that on average, 20 per-cent of the calls were from Spanish speakers.Given these call forecasts, Lenny must now decide howto staff the call center during each 2 hour shift of a weekday.Duringtheforecastingproject, CreativeChaosConsultantsclosely observed the operators working at the individual clin-ics and departments and determined the number of calls op-erators process per hour. The consultants informed Lenny thatan operator is able to process an average of six calls per hour.Lennyalsoknowsthathehasbothfull-timeandpart-timeworkers available to staff the call center. A full-time employeeworks8hoursperday, butbecauseofpaperworkthatmustalso be completed, the employee spends only 4 hours per dayonthephone.Tobalancetheschedule, theemployeealter-nates the 2-hour shiftsbetween answering phones and com-pleting paperwork. Full-time employees can start their day ei-ther by answering phones or by completing paperwork on thefirstshift.Thefull-timeemployeesspeakeitherSpanishorEnglish, but none of them are bilingual. Both Spanish-speak-ingandEnglish-speakingemployeesarepaid$10perhourfor work before 5 P.M. and $12 per hour for work after 5 P.M.The full-time employees can begin work at the beginning ofthe 7 A.M. to 9 A.M. shift, 9 A.M. to 11 A.M. shift, 11 A.M. to1 P.M. shift, or 1 P.M. to 3 P.M. shift. The part-time employeeswork for 4 hours, only answer calls, and only speak English.Theycanstartworkatthebeginningofthe3P.M. to5 P.M.shiftorthe5P.M. to7P.M. shift, andlikethefull-timeem-ployees, theyarepaid$10perhourforworkbefore5P.M.and $12 per hour for work after 5 P.M.For the following analysis consider only the labor costforthetimeemployeesspendansweringphones.Thecostfor paperwork time is charged to other cost centers.(a) How many Spanish-speaking operators and how many English-speaking operators does the hospital need to staff the call cen-terduringeach2-hourshiftofthedayinordertoanswerallcalls? Please provide an integer number since half a human op-erator makes no sense.(b) Lennyneedstodeterminehowmanyfull-timeemployeeswhospeak Spanish, full-time employees who speak English, and part-timeemployeesheshouldhiretobeginoneachshift.CreativeChaos Consultants advise him that linear programming can beusedtodothisinsuchawayastominimizeoperatingcostswhileansweringallcalls.Formulatealinearprogrammingmodel of this problem.(c) Obtainanoptimalsolutionforthelinearprogrammingmodelformulated in part (b) to guide Lennys decision.(d) Because many full-time workers do not want to work late into theevening, Lenny can find only one qualified English-speaking op-eratorwillingtobeginworkat1P.M. Giventhisnewconstraint,how many full-time English-speaking operators, full-time Spanish-speaking operators, and part-time operators should Lenny hire foreach shift to minimize operating costs while answering all calls?(e) Lenny now has decided to investigate the option of hiring bilin-gualoperatorsinsteadofmonolingualoperators.Ifalltheop-eratorsarebilingual, howmanyoperatorsshouldbeworkingduringeach2-hourshifttoanswerallphonecalls? Asinpart(a), please provide an integer answer.(f) If all employees are bilingual, how many full-time and part-timeemployees should Lenny hire to begin on each shift to minimizeoperatingcostswhileansweringallcalls?Asinpart(b), for-mulate a linear programming model to guide Lennys decision.(g) What is the maximum percentage increase in the hourly wagerate that Lenny can pay bilingual employees over monolingualemployees without increasing the total operating costs?(h) What other features of the call center should Lenny explore toimprove service or minimize operating costs?I CASE 3.4 PROMOTING A BREAKFAST CEREALClaireSyverson, vicepresidentformarketingoftheSuperGrain Corporation, is facing a daunting challenge. She needstodevelopapromotionalcampaignthatwillenablethe companysnewbreakfastcerealCrunchyStarttosuc-cessfullyenteracrowdedbreakfastcerealmarket.Fortu-nately, CrunchyStarthasalotgoingforit.Greattaste.hil61217_ch03_case.qxd5/12/0417:11Page 34 ADDITIONAL CASESNutritious.Crunchyfromstarttofinish.Shecanrecitethelitany in her sleep. It has the makings of a winning promo-tional campaign.However, Claireknowsthatshehastoavoidthemis-takesshemadeinherlastcampaignforabreakfastcereal(her first big assignment since she won this promotion). Shethoughtshehaddevelopedareallygoodcampaign, butsomehow it had failed to connect with the most crucial seg-ments of the marketyoung children and parents of youngchildren.Shealsohasconcludedthatitwasamistakenotto include cents-off coupons (coupons that provide rebates)in the magazine and newspaper advertising.She had better get it right this time, especially after thebig stumble last time. The companys president, David Sloan,alreadyhasimpressedonherhowimportantthesuccessofCrunchyStartistothefutureofthecompany.Sheremem-bersexactlyhowDavidconcludedtheconversation.Thecompanys shareholders are not happy. We need to get thoseearnings headed in the right direction again.Claire already has employed a leading advertising firm,Giacomi&Jackowitz, tohelpdesignanationwidepromo-tionalcampaignthatwillachievethelargestpossibleexpo-sure for Crunchy Start. Super Grain will pay this firm a feebasedonservicesperformed(nottoexceed$1million),andhasallocatedanadditional$4millionforadvertisingexpenses.Giacomi & Jackowitz has identified the three most ef-fective advertising media for this product:Medium 1: Television commercials on Saturday morn-ing programs for children.Medium 2: Advertisements in food and family-orientedmagazines.Medium 3: Advertisements in Sunday supplements ofmajor newspapers.Theproblemnowistodeterminewhichlevels shouldbechosen for these advertising activities to obtain the most ef-fective advertising mix.To determine the best mix of activity levels for this par-ticular advertising problem, it is necessary (as always) to iden-tify the overall measure of performance for the problem andthen the contribution of each activity toward this measure. AnultimategoalforSuperGrainistomaximizeitsprofits, butit is difficult to make a direct connection between advertisingexposureandprofits.Therefore, asasurrogateforprofit,Clairedecidestouseexpectednumberofexposures astheoverallmeasureofperformance, whereeachviewingofanadvertisementbysomeindividualcountsasoneexposure.Giacomi & Jackowitz has made preliminary plans for ad-vertisements in the three media. The firm also has estimatedthe expected number of exposures for each advertisement ineach medium, as given in the bottom row of Table 1.I TABLE 1 Cost and exposure dataCostsEach TV Each EachCost Category Commercial Magazine Ad Sunday AdAdvertising costs $300,000 $150,000 $100,000Planning costs $ 90,000 $ 30,000 $ 40,000Expected number1,300,000 600,000 500,000of exposures Thenumberofadvertisementsthatcanberuninthedifferent media are restricted by both the advertising bud-get (a limit of $4 million) and the planning budget (a limitof$1millionforthefeetoGiacomi&Jackowitz).An-other restriction is that there are only five commercial spotsavailableforrunningdifferentcommercialsonchildrenstelevisionprogramsonSaturdaymorning(medium1).Theothertwomediahaveanamplenumberofspotsavailable.Consequently, the three limited resources for this prob-lem areResource 1: Advertising budget ($4 million),Resource 2: Planning budget ($1 million),Resource 3: Commercial spots available (5).Table 1 shows how much of the advertising budget and theplanning budget would be used by each advertisement in therespective media.hil61217_ch03_case.qxd5/12/0417:11Page 4 Thefirstrowgivesthecostperadvertisementineachmedium. (The cost of using only a fraction of an adver-tising spot is assumed to be that fraction of the cost givenin the table.) The second row shows Giacomi & Jackowitzs estimatesofitstotalcost(includingoverheadandprofit)forde-signinganddevelopingeachadvertisementforthere-spectivemedia.1(Thiscostrepresentsthebillablefeefrom Super Grain.) Thelastrowthengivestheexpectednumberofexpo-sures per advertisement.Since the promotional campaign is for a breakfast cereal thatshouldhavespecialappealtoyoungchildren, Clairefeelsthattwoaudiencesshouldbeespeciallytargetedyoungchildren and parents of young children. (This is why one ofthethreeadvertisingmediarecommendedbyGiacomi&Jackowitz is commercials on childrens television programsSaturdaymorning.)Consequently, Clairehasestablishedtwo requirements for the campaign.Requirement 1: The advertising of one type or anothershouldbeseenbyatleast5millionyoung children.Requirement 2: The advertising of one type or anothershouldbeseenbyatleast5millionparents of young children.Ineffect, thesetworequirementsareminimumacceptablelevels for two special benefits to be achieved by the adver-tising activities.Benefit 1: Promoting the new breakfast cereal to youngchildren.Benefit 2: Promoting the new breakfast cereal to par-ents of young children.Because of the way the requirements have been articulated,the level of each of these benefits is measured by the num-berofpeople inthespecifiedcategorythatarereachedbythe advertising.Toenabletheconstructionofthecorrespondingbene-fit constraints, Claire asks Giacomi & Jackowitz to estimatehow much each advertisement in each of the media will con-tribute to each benefit, as measured by the number of peo-plereachedinthespecifiedcategory.Theseestimatesaregiven in Table 2.CASE 3.4 PROMOTING A BREAKFAST CEREAL 5I TABLE 2 Benefit dataNumber Reached in Target CategoryMinimumEach TV Each Each AcceptableTarget Category Commercial Magazine Ad Sunday Ad LevelYoung children 1.2 million 0.1 million 0 5 millionParents of young children 0.5 million 0.2 million 0.2 million 5 million1When presenting its estimates in this form, the firm is making two simplifying assumptions. One is that its cost for designing and developing each ad-ditional advertisement in a medium is roughly the same as for the first advertisement in that medium. The second is that its cost when working with onemedium is unaffected by how much work it is doing (if any) with the other media.Clairehasonemoreconsiderationshewantstoincor-porateintothemodel.Sheisastrongbelieverinthepro-motional value of cents-off coupons (coupons that shopperscan clip from printed advertisements to obtain a refund of adesignatedamountwhenpurchasingtheadvertiseditem).Consequently, shealwaysearmarksamajorportionofherannualmarketingbudgetfortheredemptionofthesecoupons. She still has $1,490,000 left from this years allot-ment for coupon redemptions. Because of the importance ofCrunchyStarttothecompany, shehasdecidedtousethisentireremainingallotmentinthecampaignpromotingthiscereal. Both medium 2 (advertisements in food and family-oriented magazines) and medium 3 (advertisements in Sun-day supplements of major newspapers) will feature cents-offcoupons. The estimates of the amount of coupon redemptionper advertisement in each of these media is given in Table 3.hil61217_ch03_case.qxd5/12/0417:11Page 5(a) You now are in Claires shoes. Formulate and solve a linear pro-gramming model to determine the number of advertisements torun in each of the media in order to maximize the expected num-ber of exposures while satisfying all the constraints.(b) Foreachofthefourassumptionsoflinearprogrammingpre-sented in Sec. 3.3, discuss how well you feel it is satisfied forthis problem.(c) In light of your conclusions in part (b), do you feel that the lin-ear programming model used in part (a) adequately captures thecomplexities of this problem for Claires purposes? Explain.Note: This case will be continued in Case 12.3, so we sug-gest that you save your results.6 ADDITIONAL CASESI TABLE 3 Coupon redemption dataContribution Toward Required AmountEach TV Each Each RequiredRequirement Commercial Magazine Ad Sunday Ad AmountCoupon Redemption 0 $40,000 $120,000 $1,490,000hil61217_ch03_case.qxd5/12/0417:11Page 6