The hospital administrator at Community General Hospital must appoint head nurses to four newly

established departments: urology, cardiology, orthopedics, and obstetrics. In anticipation of this staffing

problem, she had hired four nurses: Hopkins, Berry, Clooney, and Estephan. Believing in the decision

modeling approach to problem solving $($i$.$e$.,$ prescriptive analytics$),$ the administrator has interviewed

each nurse, considered his or her background, personality, and talents, and developed a scale ranging

from $0$ to $50$ points rating to be used in the assignment.

A $50$ for a Nurse being assigned to the cardiology unit implies that the nurse would be perfectly suited for

that task. A value close to $0,$ on the other hand, would imply that the nurse is not at all suited to head that

unit. The table below gives the complete set of the rating figures that the hospital administrator felt

represented all possible assignments. Which nurse should be assigned to which unit?

Department

Nurse Urology Cardiology Orthopedics Obstetrics

Hopkins $30282048$

Berry $32382338$

Clooney $33382436$

Estephan $25403815$

a$.$ Define the decision variables of this problem. $(3$ points$)$

b$.$ Provide the algebraic formulation of the objective function. $(3$ points$)$

c$.$ Formulate this problem as an $$Assignment Model$$ on a spreadsheet and use Excel$$s Solver

to determine which nurse should be assigned to which unit and the optimal rating. $($Provide

the corresponding $$Excel Spreadsheet$$ and the $$Answer Report$).$ Include $$managerial

statements$$ that communicate the results of the analyses $($i$.$e$.$ describe verbally the

results$).(15$ points$)$