Larry Edison is the director of the Computer Center for Buckly College. He now needs to schedule the staffing of the center. It is open from 8am until midnight. Larry has monitored the usage of the center at various times of the day and determined that the following number of computer consultants (qualified graduate students) are required.

Time of day	Minimum number of consultants required
8am - noon	6
noon - 4pm	8
4pm - 8pm	12
8pm - midnight	6

Two types of computer consultants can be hired: full-time and part-time. The full-time consultants work for eight consecutive hours in any of the following shifts: morning (8 am4 pm), afternoon (noon8 pm), and evening (4 pmmidnight). Full-time consultants are paid $17.50 per hour.

Part-time consultants can be hired to work any of the four shifts listed in the table. Part-time consultants are paid $15 per hour.

An additional requirement is that during every time period, there must be at least two full-time consultants on duty for every part-time consultant on duty.

Which category of linear programming problem does this problem fit?

a. assignment problem

b. cost-benefit-tradeoff problem

c. resource allocation problem

d. transportation problem

What are the decisions that need to be made?

a. hourly rate

b. minimum number of consultants required at each time of the day

c. number of shifts

d. number of consultants in each shift

What should the objective be?

a. Minimize total employee cost

b. maximize total profit

c. minimize customer waiting time

d. maximize service rating

What is the total number of shifts, considering both full-time and part-time?

a. 4

b. 8

c. 3

d. 7

e. 2

Suppose that Larry were to hire three full-time consultants for the morning shift, two for the afternoon shift, and four for the evening shift, as well as three part-time workers for each of the four shifts. Calculate how many consultants would be working at each time of the day and what the total cost would be for the entire day.

what is number of consultants working: 8am-noon, noon-4pm, 4pm-8pm, 8pm-midnight

What is total cost?

Make a rough sketch of a spreadsheet model, with blocks laid out for the data cells, changing cells, output cells, and objective cell. Build a spreadsheet model and then solve it.

What is Optimal number of consultants in each shift?

What is Optimal objective function value?