QUANTITATIVE DECISION MAKING – FORECASTING AND SCHEDULING

I have two questions that needs to be answered, are you able to help with Forecasting and Scheduling. Questions 1 and 3 needs to be answered. Please see below for instructions

Question 1 can be solved with linear programming but can also be solved with basic brute force, just like Johnson’s rule. To solve this with Linear Programming, you will set up a 30 cell matrix (with 6 columns and 5 rows). Each of these 30 values should be populated with 0 or 1 and these 30 values are the ones Solver should seek out. You need to have a sum of each column and each row. The column totals should each equal 1 (and thus are constraints) and the row totals should each be greater than or equal to 1 and less than or equal to 2 (and thus are also constraints). Then you set up the objective function. For those who prefer to not use Linear Programming, you can solve this by looking for the minimum value. Start with the top row and look for the smallest value in the row. Whichever is the smallest, you assign that row to that column. Then move to the second row. Here you look for the smallest value in this row (excluding the column was just used) and assign that row to that column. This process of looking for the smallest value continues until all rows and columns have been assigned. You should get the same answer with either approach.

Question 3 is a basic weekly forecasting problem. You can use either regression or year-over-year momentum based forecasting. No tricks, just checking if you remember how to apply the technique.