Barry Lime is marketing manager of SuperMicros, which has recently begun to lease microcomputers.

The company has set aside a total of 200 micros for this purpose. Barry has obtained recent market research data, showing the distribution of 100 similar micro leasing policies:

Length of lease (years) 1 2 3 4 No. of policies 20 40 30 10 Barry would like to find (i) the number of new leasing policies required each year for the next four years in order to maintain SuperMicros’ rentals at 200 (ii) the average length of the leasing period

(iii) the average number of new leasing policies required each year.

(Answer: This exercise is equivalent to a statistical equipment replacement problem and is solved using the model of Figure 5.5. (i) 40, 88, 94, 86 (ii) 2.3 years (iii) 87.)