Kenya Methodist University

School of Business and Economics

Department of Business Administration

BUSS 320 : Quantitative Methods Assignement

LECTURER : WILSON MUEMA

Instructions

1. Answer All Questions

2. SUBMIT BEFORE 10TH MARCH 2018
3. Reference your work using APA style

Question One
a) Solve for x using matrix algebra
6 x1 + 3 x2 + x3 = 22
x1 + 4 x2 - 2 x3 = 12
4 x1 - x2 + 5 x3 = 10

b) Reduce the following game by Dominance and find the game value.

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 TABLE 1

PLAYER B

I II III IV
I 3 2 4 0
PLAYER A II 3 4 2 4
4 2 4 0
III 0 4 0 8
IV

Question Two
c) At a particular Automatic Teller Machine (ATM), customer’s arrival follows a Poisson
distribution with an average time of 6 minutes between arrivals. The time- intervals
between services at ATM is 3 minutes. On the basis of this information, answer the
following questions:
i) What would be the expected average queue length?
ii) What would be the average number of customers in the queuing system?
iii) How long on average does a customer have to wait in the queue?
iv) How much time on average does a customer spend in the system?
Question three
R&D department is planning to bid on a large project for the development of a new
communication system for commercial planes. The accompanying table shows the activities,
times and sequences.

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Activity Preceding Time in Days
Activity Optimistic Most likely Pessimistic
Time Time Time
A - 6 6 24
B - 6 12 18
C - 12 12 30
D A 6 6 6
E B 12 30 48
F C 12 30 42
G D,E 18 30 54
H B 17 29 47
I H,F 14 28 48
J G,I 14 28 48
K J 6 6 24

Required:-
a) Draw a network to represent the above data
b) Determine the critical path of the project and the expected project length
c) Calculate the variance and standard deviation of the project
d) Compute the probability of completing the project within a period of 120 days
e) Suppose you want to shorten the completion time as much as possible and have the option of
shortening any or all of B, C, D and G each by two days. Which would you shorten? What
would be the new critical path?

Question Four
a) Describe the limitations of linear programming technique.
b) Maximize Z = 80 x1 + 120 x2
Subject to

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 x1 + x2 �9
20 x1 + 50 x2 �360
x1 �2
x2 �3
x1 , x2 �0

Question Five
a) find the optimal solution to the following transportation problem in which the cells contain
the transportation cost in thousands Kenyan Shillings

TABLE 2
W1 W2 W3 W4 W5 Available
F1 7 6 4 5 9 40
F2 8 5 6 7 8 30
F3 6 8 9 6 5 20
F4 5 7 7 8 6 10
Required 30 30 15 20 5 100

Question Six
a) Describe the term simulation
b) Explain the advantages and disadvantages of simulation techniques

Question Seven
A company has a team of four salesmen and there are four districts where the company wants to
start its business. After taking into account the capabilities of the salesmen and the nature of
districts, the company estimates in thousands of Kshs for each salesman in each district is as below.

District
1 2 3 4
A 16 10 14 11
Salesman B 14 11 15 15
C 15 15 13 12
D 13 12 14 15

Find the assignment of salesmen to various districts which will yield maximum profit

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Question Eight
a) The fixed costs of a company is Kshs 35,000 and the variable cost per unit is Kshs 500. The
revenue function for sale of x units is given by R ( x) = 5000 x - 100 x 2 . Find;
i) Profit function
ii) Break even values
iii) The values of x which result in a loss
b) Discuss the purpose of input output analysis in an economy

c) An economy consist of two industries X and Y with each industry producing a single
product. The table shows the use and production of X and Y over some fixed period of time.

TO X Y Consumer Demand

FROM
X 70 35 95
Y 40 60 60

The final demand for X increases by 40 units and Y decreases by 25%. Determine the new total
output by the two industries so as to satisfy the new final demand.