Chapter 13, Problem 22QP

During nearly four decades of business operations, Memphis-based FedEx has earned a reputation for reliable, on-time delivery of packages to homes and offices around the country. Founder Fred Smith originally focused on overnight deliveries, choosing Memphis as the company’s headquarters because the airport rarely closes due to bad weather. With FedEx’s planes departing and arriving on schedule nearly all the time, its express shipments usually remained on schedule, then and now. To reassure customers that delivery will take place when and where promised, the firm offers a money-back guarantee on time-sensitive express shipments, among other services. FedEx has steadily expanded its portfolio of services since the 1970s. Its original overnight express delivery is currently available to U.S. customers in various forms, including “first-overnight” delivery, next-morning delivery, next-afternoon delivery, and budget-pleasing two- or three-day delivery. The company’s services also include cost-effective ground delivery for parcels and extra-speedy same-day delivery for urgent deliveries within 1,800 cities. Over the years, FedEx has widened its delivery network to more than 220 countries. It has purchased more cargo jets and acquired specialized shipping firms, including Tiger International, Roberts Express, RPS, and TNT Express, to support global growth. For international business customers needing products, parts, or raw materials shipped across countries or continents, the company now offers time-saving services such as commercial freight forwarding and cross-border logistical support. To add the convenience of local drop-off and pickup points for U.S. consumers and small businesses, FedEx acquired the Kinko’s office services company in 2004 and later rebranded it as FedEx Office. This acquisition also added printing and copying to the menu of services offered. Then the company arranged for large U.S. retailers such as Walgreens, Albertsons, Kroger, and Safeway to accept packages for shipment and receive package delivery for customer pickup in thousands of store locations. This means people who want to send a package can head to a nearby retailer and ship where they shop, rather than making a separate trip to the FedEx location. It’s also a safe alternative for packages to be picked up by people who don’t want FedEx shipments left by the front door. Another service FedEx offers to small and mid-sized businesses, including retailers, is FedEx Fulfillment. The purpose is to expedite order fulfillment by having each business store its products in a FedEx warehouse. Then, when the business’s customers place orders, FedEx puts the products into boxes bearing the business’s own logo and ships directly to those customers. The business doesn’t need a separate warehouse or staff for fulfillment, and packages are on their way to customers more quickly because the products were in FedEx’s warehouse, ready to be packed and shipped. This service puts FedEx into direct competition with Amazon.com, which offers a similar service to merchants that sell through the online Amazon Marketplace. But it also gives businesses that don’t sell via Amazon a fast and professional fulfillment alternative. FedEx is careful to let customers know, through media and social-media announcements, when it anticipates that extreme weather or other conditions will cause delays or force it to halt pickups and deliveries. For the duration of Hurricane Irma, for example, FedEx said it would suspend deliveries in Florida. Some Florida customers who had ordered generators to be delivered via FedEx were unhappy, because they worried about being without power during and after the storm. But one FedEx employee loaded several generator orders into his car and took them to customers himself. When a customer posted a grateful compliment to FedEx on Facebook, the message generated thousands of likes, shares, and positive comments. The company also received positive comments for its donations of cash and transportation services to areas devastated by Hurricanes Irma, Harvey, and Maria. According to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), FedEx often tops the list of U.S. shipping companies as ranked by customers surveyed. Every day, the company delivers 13 million packages—and during the busy year-end holiday season, it delivers many more. By meeting customers’ expectations for on-time deliveries, FedEx has increased annual revenues beyond $60 billion and positioned itself for continued growth in the future. How does FedEx’s money-back guarantee address customers’ concerns about heterogeneity?

Burrito King (a new fast-food franchise opening up nationwide) has successfully automated burrito production for its drive-up fast-food establishments. The Burro-Master 9000 requires a constant 45 seconds to produce a batch of burritos. It has been estimated that customers will arrive at the drive-up window according to a Poisson distribution at an average of one every 50 seconds. To help determine the amount of space needed forthe line at the drive-up window, Burrito King would like to know the expected average

Given information: A typical TSA agent at Piedmont Triad International Airport takes approximately 1.15 minutes to screen each passenger that arrives at the security gate. During the day, a passenger arrives at the gate on average every 1.3 minutes. Both the service rate and arrival rate follow a Poisson distribution. Based on this information and the assumption that only one screening line is open at the security gate, answers the following questions. Round calculations to at least 3 decimal places. Note: Round each calculation to at least 3 decimal places. Arrival time =60/1.3=46.153 Server Rate =60/1.15=52.174 L=expected number of passengers in queue =6.780 waiting time in queue =.1469 time spent screening=.1660 please answer the 2 foloowing questions What is percent of the time does the typical TSA agent spend actively screening passengers? Throughout the day, passenger arrival rates vary with the greatest number of passengers arriving about 45 minutes before a flight is…

The new accounts loan officer of the Millennium Commercial Bank interviews all customers for new accounts. The customers desiring to open new accounts arrive at the rate of 4 per hour, according to a Poisson distribution, and the accounts officer spends an average of 12 minutes with each customer, setting up a new account. Determine the operating characteristics (P0, L, Lq, W, Wq and Pw) for this system.

HDFC Bank has a single automated teller machine (ATM) located in a shopping center. Data were collected during a period of peak usage on Saturday afternoon and it was found that the average time between customers arrivals is 3.6minutes with a standard deviation of 0.7minute.lt also was found it takes an average of 2.8minutes (with a standard deviation of 1.9minutes) for a customer to complete a transaction. (a) Calculate expected customer arrival rate & service rate per server? (b) Calculate the expected server utilization? (c) Approximately how long will customers need to wait in line during the peak usage period?

Trucks are required to pass through a weighing station so that they can be checked for weight violations. Trucks arrive at the station at the rate of 45 an hour between 7:00 pm and 9:00 pm. Currently, three inspectors are on duty during those hours, each of whom can inspect 25 trucks an hour. Please show work. Question: How many trucks would you expect to see at the weighing station, including those being inspected?

Seattle's Top Coffee owns and operates a chain of popular coffee stands that serve over 30 different coffee-based beverages. The constraint at the coffee stands is the amount of time required to fill an order, which can be considerable for the more complex beverages. Sales are often lost because customers leave after seeing a long waiting line to place an order. Careful analysis of the company's existing products has revealed that the opportunity cost of order filling time is $2.70 per minute. The company is considering introducing a new product, praline cappuccino, to be made with pecan extract and molasses. The variable cost of the standard size praline cappuccino would be $0.30 and the time required to fill an order for the beverage would be 40 seconds Required: What is the minimum acceptable selling price for the new praline cappuccino product?

Prybloxx primarily uses one courier company, AJAX Couriers, for all their deliveries. In some circumstances, where AJAX is too busy and does not have capacity to fulfil deliveries or they do not cover certain areas, only then will Prybloxx make use of a different courier company. Prybloxx has recently had a significant influx of customer complaints regarding goods that have not been delivered, delivered long after the agreed delivery time or damaged once they arrive at the customer. Prybloxx is aware of the effect that this could have on demand for their product, customer goodwill and are now investigating insourcing the delivery of their product to customers. Prybloxx has noted that they have two alternatives in insourcing this department – they can either purchase a local courier company that is considered a going concern or they can purchase all of the required assets and set up such a department themselves. Mr. Pranoto (production manager) has requested that you prepare a report…

A typical TSA agent at Piedmont Triad International Airport takes approximately 1.15 minutes to screeneach passenger that arrives at the security gate. During the day, a passenger arrives at the gate onaverage every 1.3 minutes. Both the service rate and arrival rate follow a Poisson distribution. Based onthis information and the assumption that only one screening line is open at the security gate, answer thefollowing questions. Round calculations to at least 3 decimal places.Note: Round each calculation to at least 3 decimal places. a) What is the average number of passengers waiting in line to be screened? b) What is the average amount of time (in minutes) passengers spend waiting in line? c) What is the average amount of time (in minutes) passengers spend in the screening system? d) What is percent of the time does the typical TSA agent spend actively screening passengers? e) Throughout the day, passenger arrival rates vary with the greatest number of passengers arriving about 45…

An ice cream truck is parked at a local beach and customers queue up to buy ice creams at a rate of one per minute. The arrival pattern of people buying ice cream is essentially random. It takes 40 seconds on average to serve a customer ice cream, with a standard deviation of 20 seconds. Find the following expected measures of performance for this system: the expected time in the queue for ice cream, the expected total time to get an ice cream, and the expected number of customers waiting for ice cream.

Pasquist Water Company (PWC) operates a 24-hour facil-ity designed to efficiently fill water-hauling tanker trucks.Trucks arrive randomly to the facility and wait in line to ac-cess a wellhead pump. Since trucks vary in size and the filling operation is manually performed by the truck driver, the timeto fill a truck is also random.a. If the manager of PWC uses the multiple-server modelto calculate the operating characteristics of the facility’swaiting line, list three assumptions she must make regard-ing the behavior of waiting trucks and the truck arrivalprocess.b. Suppose an average of 336 trucks arrive each day, thereare four wellhead pumps, and each pump can serve anaverage of four trucks per hour.▪ What is the probability that exactly 10 trucks will arrivebetween 1:00 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. on any given day?▪ How likely is it that once a truck is in position at a well-head, the filling time will be less than 15 minutes?c. Contrast and comment on the performance differencesbetween:▪…

The time from when a patient is discharged from North Shore Hospital to the time the discharged patient’s bed is ready to be assigned to a new patient is referred to as the bed assignment turnaround time. If the bed turnaround time is excessive, it can cause problems with patient flow and delay medical procedures throughout the hospital. This can cause long waiting times for physicians and patients thus creating customer dissatisfaction. The admissions RN has assigned a patient care associate to measure the bed turnaround time for a randomly selected bed each morning., afternoon, and evening for 30 days. Following are the bed turnaround time sample observations: Day Day Bed Turnaround Times (min) 1 1 127 135 167 144 151 2 2 140 155 122 135 119 3 3 112 128 97 118 131 4 4 223 135 154 187 150 5 5 181 155 160 172 166 6 6 103 158 145 124 149 7 7 146 135 167 150 178 8 8 104 122 115 137 129 9 9 136 158 137 148 156 10 10 145 163 106 139 170 11 11 84 146 125 98…

Chapter 13, Problem 22QP

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