(b) Consider a construction firm that is deciding to specialise in building High School blocks
or Elementary School blocks or a combination of both. The construction company must
submit a bid proposal, which costs money to prepare, and there are no guarantees that
it will be awarded the contract. If the company bids on the high school, it has a 35%
chance of getting the contract, and it expects to make $162,000 net profit. However, if
the company does not get the contract, it loses $11,500. If the company bids on the
elementary school, there is a 25% chance of getting the contract, and it would net
$140,000 in profit. However, if the company does not get the contract, it will lose $5,750.
(ii) What should the construction company do?
(14 Marks)
(iii) How sensitive to the estimate of the probability of the award of a contract is the
decision (i):
• in either to build the High School or the Elementary School blocks? (6.5 Marks)
• to the net profit for each case, if awarded the contract?
(9.5 Marks)
QUESTION 4 [53 MARKS]
(a) Provide a comprehensive definition of a Decision tree and hence diagrammatically
show its basic characteristic components.
(14 Marks)
(b) Using the problem in Question 2(c) above, provide the Fold-Back method tree for its
solution.
(14 Marks)
(c)
(i) What is the Kendall's classification of Queuing Systems?
(5 Marks)
Discuss specifically the M/M/1 queuing system and the process N(t) describing its state at
time t as a birth-death process. Provide its state independent parameter equations and define
its Traffic Intensity.
(3 Marks)
(ii) Consider a drive-in banking service modelled as an M/M/1 queuing system with customer
arrival rate of 2 per minute. It is desired to have fewer than 5 customers line up 99% of the
time. How fast should the service rate be?
(6 Marks)
(iii) Trucks arrive at garage for a stop-over service according to a Poisson process at a rate of
one per every 13 minutes, and the garage service time is an exponential rate variable with
mean 9 minutes.
(iiia) Find the average number L of trucks, the average time W a truck spends in the garage,
and the average time Wq a truck spends in waiting for service.
(5 Marks)
(iiib) Due to increased traffic, suppose that the arrival rate of the trucks increases by 5%.
Find the corresponding changes in L, W, and Wq.
(5 Marks)
(iiic) Discuss your observations.
(1 Mark)
END OF EXAMINATION
TOTAL MARKS:240 CONVERTTO 100%
Page 4 of4