Question 1 (500 words)
Why is it good or bad to operate an IT support services system (help desk) on a strictly, first-come, first-served basis?
Question 1a (500 words)
Explain how higher quality can lead to lower costs.
Question 2
Barbara Herdman is the manager of the marketing research department of J.E. Hall, Inc. She recently collected demand data for the last six years of a special product and then asked one of her associates, Mr. Brown, to forecast the data for the same past six years using the sales force composite method. The following data provide the details for Mr. Brown’s forecast:
Year
Actual demand
Mr. Brown’s forecast
1
490
492
2
510
503
3
535
512
4
560
578
5
590
580
6
630
620
Complete the following:
Forecast the demand for the seventh year using the exponential smoothing method with alpha = 0.4. Show all details clearly. Use the initial forecast for the first year (492).
Which of the above methods is more accurate using mean absolute deviation (MAD) criteria?
Barbara performed a regression analysis on the six-year data and established the following equation: Demand = 456 + 28x(t) where t is the code for the year (t = 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6) Forecast the demand for the seventh year using Barbara’s equation above.
Question 3
During registration at a university, students have their courses approved by the adviser. It takes the adviser an average of 2.8 minutes (exponentially distributed) to approve each schedule, and students arrive at the adviser’s office at the rate of 20 per hour (Poisson distributed).
Complete the following:
Compute the average time a student spends in the waiting line.
The registrar has received complaints from students about the length of time they must wait to have their schedules approved. The registrar is considering several ways to reduce the waiting time.
One way to reduce the waiting time is to assign some assistants to the adviser. Each such assistant would reduce the average time required…