Problem 1:

Calls requiring information technology (IT) support arrive at the help desk of this hospital every 3 minutes (exponential distribution). The time it takes to troubleshoot the problem over the phone is exponentially distributed with a mean of 6 minutes. IT support staff is paid an average of $25 per hour. The lost time for the care provider making the phone call to have the issue fixed is valued at $70 per hour. Perform a cost analysis to determine the optimal number of servers that should be working at the help desk.

Problem 2:

Requests for solutions to billing-related patient complaints have been received. Six of those jobs were assigned to you, one of the support specialists. You have latitude in deciding the order in which these requests will be processed, but your performance is measured in terms of total turnaround times (aka flow times) and total tardiness. All jobs are equally important, and you start processing after the last sample arrives, that is time t = 200 minutes. Try out the EDD sequencing rule and the SPT sequencing rule. Based on your results, decide which of these two rules you will put into practice, and briefly explain why you choose that rule.

Request	Arrival Time (min)	Processing Time (min)	Due Date
A	20	60	310
B	80	120	380
C	100	90	400
D	120	45	500
E	150	150	520
F	200	100	560

Problem 3:

1. At BPH, the average demand is 10 boxes per day, with a standard deviation of 2. There is a lead time of 7 days to receive boxes from the supplier. The manager of hospital supplies wants to maintain a 90% service level. The boxes cost $10 each, the fixed set up cost is $50 per order, and the holding cost is 15% per year.
   1. What would be the safety stock required?
   2. What would be the re-order point?
   3. What would be the economic order quantity?