DISTANCE EDUCATION
M.B.A. DEGREE EXAMINATION, DECEMBER 2017.
Third Semester
OPERATIONS RESEARCH
(Upto 2012-2013 Academic Year and 2013 Calendar Year)
Time Three hours Maximum 100 marks
PART A — × 8 40 marks)
Answer any FIVE questions.
All questions carry equal marks.
1. Describe the nature and limitations of operations
research.
2. Explain the primal and dual relationship in LPP.
3. Discuss the use of computers for LPP.
4. Describe the problem of degeneracy in a transportation
problem.
5. Discuss the use of network techniques in health care
sciences.
6. Explain the important characteristics of queueing
system.
7. What is simulation? What are the advantages and
limitations of using simulation?
Sub. Code
35
DE-2631
2
wk4
8. In a railway marshalling yard, goods trains arrive at a
rate of 30 trains per day. Assuming the inter-arrival time
follows an exponential distribution and the service time
distribution is also exponential with an average 36
minutes, calculate the following
the mean queue size, and
the probability that the queue size exceeds 10.
PART B — × 15 60 marks)
Answer any FOUR questions.
All questions carry equal marks.
9. Explain the simplex procedure to solve a linear
programming problem. How do you identify optimality in
the simplex method?
10. Describe the North-West corner method to solve a
transportation problem.
Explain the differences between a transportation
problem and an assignment problem.
11. Explain how network analysis can be used for resource
planning and levelling in project management.
12. Describe the various basic steps involved in PERT/CPM
techniques.
13. What is queueing model? Explain the conditions
for the existence of steady state in queueing
system.
14. What is Monte-Carto simulation? Explain the use of
Monte-Carto simulation in queueing theory.
DE-2631
3
wk4
15. The activities and time estimates of a project is given
below
Activity Estimated durations (weeks)
i j Optimistic Most likely Pessimistic
1 2 1 1 7
1 3 1 4 7
1 4 2 2 8
2 5 1 1 1
3 5 2 5 14
4 6 2 5 8
5 6 3 6 15
Draw the project network.
What is the expected project length?
What is the probability that the project will be
completed?
at least 4 weeks earlier than expected
no more than 4 weeks later than expected?
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