Department of Industrial Engineering
INDR 100 – Introduction to Industrial Engineering
Questions for Homework #4
Submission Deadline: 21.12.2021 (Tuesday until 23:59)
How to upload your homework:
• Upload your PDF document to the BLACKBOARD, under the Course
Content – Homeworks – HW4 – HW4_Submission folder.
• Do not forget to put all your work in one PDF document
• The name of your PDF file should be in the following format
INDR100_YOURNAMESURNAME_HW#4
1. Consider the Chapters 21-30 of the book “The Goal” and answer the following questions.
a. What was the key idea of the new system that Ralph Nakamura developed? Briefly explain how
this system works.
b. Even after the successful month which almost every standard indicates good results, why did
Peach not change his decision about closing the plant?
c. What is the dominant portion of time element(s) for the bottleneck and non- bottleneck
materials and explain why that element(s) is dominated?
d. In which way “decreasing batch sizes of non-bottleneck materials into half” is a reasonable
advice? How will it contribute to the goal of the plant?
e. What is the problem caused by the cost measurements? Explain why this type of problem had
occurred. If this problem does not prevent getting revenue, why is Alex concerned about this
issue?
2. Consider the following optimization model.
Maximize Z = 50 x + 30 x 1 2
s.t. 2x + 3x 1 2 ≤ 15 (Constraint 1)
-5 x + 2 x
1 2 ≤ 3 (Constraint 2)
x 1 ≤ 4 (Constraint 3)
x - x
1 2 ≤ 3 (Constraint 4)
x ,x
1 2 ≥ 0 (Non-negativity constraints)
a. Give an upper bound on the number of corner points of the problem. Find those points and
indicate whether each point is feasible, infeasible, or inconsistent.
b. Determine and draw the feasible region for this model. Make sure that you clearly label all the
constraints and corner points in your drawing.
c. Find the optimal solution(s) by evaluating the objective function values for all corner point
feasible solutions.
d. Draw the objective function contour where it is equal to optimal objective value.
3. Consider the following optimization model.
Maximize Z = -100 x + 50 x 1 2
s.t. 6 x + 6 x ≤ 72
1 2 (Constraint 1)
-6 x + 3 x
1 2 ≤ 27 (Constraint 2)
10 x 1 ≤ 100 (Constraint 3)
x - 2x ≤ 8
1 2 (Constraint 4)
x ,x 1 2 ≥ 0 (Non-negativity constraints)
a. Give an upper bound on the number of corner points of the problem. Find those points and
indicate whether each point is feasible, infeasible, or inconsistent.
b. Determine and draw the feasible region for this model. Make sure that you clearly label all the
constraints and points in your drawing.
c. Solve the problem and find the optimal solution(s). What is your conclusion? Explain your
reasoning.
d. Draw the objective function contour where it is equal to optimal objective value.
4. Consider the following optimization model.
Minimize Z= 2x + x 1 2
s.t. -5 x + 5 x ≤ 100
1 2 (Constraint 1)
-14 x + 7 x ≤ 561 2 (Constraint 2)
x - 4 x ≤ 10
1 2 (Constraint 3)
x - 2 x ≤ 26
1 2 (Constraint 4)
x ,x 1 2 ≥0 (Non-negativity constraints)
a. Determine and draw the feasible region for this model. Make sure that you clearly label all
the constraints and corner points in your drawing.
b. Solve the problem and find the optimal solution(s).
c. Draw the objective function contour where it is equal to optimal objective value.
d. Suppose that it is a maximization problem with the same objective function and
constraints. Solve the problem and find the optimal solution(s).
e. What is your conclusion for part d? Explain your reasoning.
