We have vans that are constantly circulating for transportation between the airport terminals and our rental center. These vans take customers who landed at the airport to the rental center and customers who returned their rental cars at the rental center to the terminal buildings. There are ve stops visited in the following order: Terminal 1 Departures, Terminal 2 Departures, Terminal 2 Arrivals, Terminal 1 Arrivals, and Rental Center. A van will stop at Terminal 1 Departures and to drop-o customers going to Terminal 1 and then goes to Terminal 2 Departures to drop o customers going to Terminal 2. Then proceeds to pick up the customers from Terminal 2 Arrivals and then Terminal 1 Arrivals as long as there are still empty seats in the van. After that vans go directly to the rental center building where the customers in the van join a single line to wait for an available agent to ll out the necessary forms and receive their car keys. The van will allow customers who returned their cars back to the rental center and wish to go to Terminal buildings to board.(If there are no returning customers, the van proceeds directly to Terminal 2 Arrivals.) The van repeats this transportation cycle. It is estimated that the average van speed is approximately 20 miles per hour during this cycle. Sketch of the rental counter, terminals, and transportation process can be found below.

Rental center to Terminal 2 Arr. 1.5 mile Rental center to Terminal 1 Dep. 2-mile Terminal 1 Dep. to Terminal 2 Dep. 0.25 mile Terminal 2 Arr. to Terminal 1 Arr. 0.45 mile Terminal 1 Arr. to Rental center 1.7 mile

We have interarrival data for arriving and returning customers only during peak hours.The interarrival data of each 15-minute time intervals between 4:00 PM and 8.30 PM for each customers can be found in the zip le provided to you. Although it does not a ect the number of cars rented, we have also the party size data for a customer. Party size data can be also found in the zip. Since our vans have a limited capacity, party size a ects the number of vans needed for the transportation. In addition, we estimated that 65% of returning customers want to go to Terminal 1 and 35% Terminal 2. Although there appears to be a fair amount of variability on the time required for a customer to board and exit the transportation vans, the average time is 12 seconds for boarding and 6 seconds for exiting. Any rental agent can service both arriving and returning rental customers.

Labor cost of the driver $12.50/hr Labor cost of the rental agent $11.50/hr Total cost of the 12-seat van $0.48/hr Total cost of the 18-seat van $0.73/hr Total cost of the 30-seat van $0.92/hr

Our policy is not to mix van types at any airport, as it can confuse the customer, and it greatly increases the maintenance costs. However, our surveys did reveal that customers tend to prefer the larger vans. For now, you can assume that the number of vans and rental agents will be constant for the 4.5-hour time period that the analysis is done. Keep this in mind that for this analysis we also need to check if we have enough cars available or not. Our rental center has the following 4 types Economy, Compact, Sedan and SUV. The survey reveals that 50% of out customers prefer the economy type, 25% Compact, 15% Sedan and 10% SUV. Assume that the returning customers also bring back cars with the same probabilities. We have initial inventory of 20 Economies, 15 Compacts, 10 Sedans and 5 SUVs. If we can not ful ll the car type demand of a customer the lost cost is assumed to be $50 per customer. Note that it is possible to upgrade the customers demand with the same price, meaning that if a customer wants to rent an economy car and we do not have any economy cars available then we can give them a compact car with the price of the economy. Of course this would cause an upgrade cost to us. Assume that 1 class upgrade costs $10 (i.e. if a customer wants an economy car and we do not have economy and compact car and we give him(her) a sedan this would be 2 class upgrades and the cost to us would be $20). Note that we would have maximum 3 class upgrades and the cost is still less than losing that customer.

Although our surveys suggest that all customers would like to have service in less than 30 minutes for arrivals and less than 18 minutes for departures, we are aware that this might be difficult to achieve. In addition, there is that occasional customer who just takes longer to serve. Thus, we are willing to accept an 85% customer satisfaction rate for our base analysis. You need to build a simulation model and do cost optimization. You are not allowed to relax any of the available assumptions, but you are welcome to add your own assumptions such as agent breaks, etc.

You need to carry out a cost optimization for your existing model considering the satisfaction constraint. You need to determine the number of rental agents, drivers, vans and the type of vans. Report all the details. Submit an OptQuest and/or Process Analyzer le (with the .doe le you used), and a detailed report (.pdf) containing optimization details. You need to specify how you have done your optimization.

Answer rating: 100% (QA)

The goal of this cost optimization is to determine the number of rental agents drivers vans and the type of vans that will be used in the transportati... View the full answer