Zipco Printing operates a shop that has five printing machines. Machines differ in their capabilities to perform various printing operations due to differences in machine designs and operator skill levels. At the beginning of the work day there are five print jobs to schedule. The manager must decide what the work machine assignments should be.

a. : How could a quantitative approach to decision making be used to solve this problem?

b. : What would be the uncontrollable inputs for which data should be collected?

C.: Define the decision variables, the objective function and the constraints that will appear in the mathematical model.

d. : Is the model deterministic or stochastic? Because?: Suggest some simplifying assumptions for this problem.