University of Derby

School of Electronics, Computing and Mathematics

In-course Assignment Specification

Module Code and Title: 5MA505 – Operational Research

Assignment No. and Title: 1
Assessment Tutor: Sam O’Neill Weighting Towards Module Grade: 25 %
Date Set: 11/11/2020 Submission Date: 11/12/2020 – 23:59

Penalty for Late Submission

Recognising that deadlines are an integral part of professional workplace practice; the University
expects students to meet all agreed deadlines for submission of assessments. However, the University
acknowledges that there may be circumstances which prevent students from meeting deadlines. There are now
3 distinct processes in place to deal with differing student circumstances.
https://www.derby.ac.uk/about/academic-regulations/

Assessed Extended Deadline (AED) Students with disabilities or long term health issues are entitled to a Support
Plan.

Exceptional Extenuating Circumstances (EEC) The EEC policy applies to situations where serious, unforeseen
circumstances prevent the student from completing the assignment on time or to the normal standard.

Late Submission Requests for late submission (LSR) will be made to the relevant Subject Manager in the
School (or Head of Joint Honours for joint honours students) who can authorise an extension of up to a
maximum of one week.

Level of Collaboration:

This is an individual assignment. No collaboration with other students or anyone else is allowed.

Learning Outcome(s) covered in this assignment:

Demonstrate a knowledge of the underlying concepts of optimisation and metaheuristics and apply appropriate
techniques to a range of problems; Derive solutions to various problems through the application and
implementation of modern optimisation techniques.

Submissions in Turnitin and Blackboard

You must submit your work using your student number to identify yourself, not your name. You must not use
your name in the text of the work at any point. When you submit your work in Turnitin you must submit your
student number within the assignment document and in the Submission title field in Turnitin.
Marking Criteria: Credit will be awarded for:

70–100%: Excellent

Outstanding; high to very high standard; a high level of critical analysis and evaluation; commendable originality;
high quality presentation; exceptional clarity of ideas; excellent coherence and logic.

60-69%: Very good

A very good standard; a very good critical analysis and evaluation; significant originality; well researched; a very good
standard of presentation; pleasing clarity of ideas; thoughtful and effective presentation; very good sense of
coherence and logic;

50-59%: Good

A good standard; a fairly good level of critical analysis and evaluation; some evidence of original thinking; quite well
researched; a good standard of presentation; ideas generally clear and coherent, some misunderstandings; some
deficiencies in presentation.

40-49%: Satisfactory

A sound standard of work; a fair level of critical analysis and evaluation; little evidence of original thinking or
originality; adequately researched; a sound standard of presentation; ideas fairly clear and coherent, some
significant misunderstandings and errors; some weakness in style or presentation but satisfactory overall.

35-39%: Unsatisfactory (marginal fail)

Overall marginally unsatisfactory; some sound aspects but some of the following weaknesses are evident:
inadequate critical analysis and evaluation; little evidence of originality; not well researched; standard of
presentation unacceptable; ideas unclear and incoherent; some significant errors and misunderstandings.

1-34%: Very poor (fail)

Well below the pass standard; a poor critical analysis and evaluation; no evidence of originality; poorly researched;
standard of presentation totally unacceptable; ideas confused and incoherent, some serious misunderstandings and
errors. A clear fail, well short of the pass standard...The work demonstrates nothing of merit.

Guidance and Presentation

Marks are given for presentation based on the following weighting:
• 10 % for presentation and quality of write up
• 90 % for answers given

You are expected to write up you models and answers. This includes defining notation, e.g. variables, constants etc…

You should try and use the built-in equation editor in word, or Latex; however, you may provide handwritten
answers that are scanned into one document. Please make sure that any handwritten answers are neat, otherwise
you may lose marks for presentation, or worse, marks for your answers if your writing is not legible.

Please do not include code within the document, any MATLAB/Excel code should be referenced and placed in an
appendix. Solutions can be provided by using notation, tables, and graphs. You would not expect to find code in the
main body of an academic document, this includes your dissertation.

Please submit both your written document and any additional MATLAB/Excel files to the submission point.
Part A
1. For the following linear program:

maximise 𝑥 + 3𝑦

subject to:

𝑥 + 2𝑦 ≤ 20
3𝑥 + 𝑦 ≤ 30
𝑥 + 10𝑦 ≤ 80
𝑥≥0
𝑦≥0

a) Solve the linear program graphically.

b) Convert into the following matrix form (useful for MATLAB).

minimise 𝒄𝑻 𝒙

subject to:

𝑨𝒙 ≤ 𝒃
𝒙≥𝟎

c) Solve the linear program via MATLAB using the matrix form.
(15 marks)

2. You have a total of £10,000 to invest in three different funds - ToyTown, C&G and Pixel Ltd.
The expected return and risk level for each of the fund is given in table 1:

Fund Expected Return Risk Level

Toy Town 6% Low
C&G 7% Medium
Pixel Ltd 10% High
Table 1:Expected return and risk level

To minimise your risk across the three funds you decide to invest at least twice as much in Toy Town as you
invest in C&G. You also decide that as Pixel Ltd is considered a high-risk fund, to limit the amount you invest
in this fund to £2000.

Taking account of your decisions to minimise the risk, produce a model and determine the optimal amount
to invest in each of the three funds so as to maximise the expected return?

What does your solution tell you about the problem?

(15 marks)
3. The following items (see Table 2) are being given away for free and you wish to maximise the value of the
items that you take away. Your rucksack has a maximum weight of 15kg and a maximum volume of 30 litres.

Item Weight (Kg) Volume (Litre) Value (£)

1 3.5 4 5
2 2.4 4 2
3 0.9 5 3
4 2.5 2 1
5 3.1 11 11
6 4.2 9 7
7 5.1 11 5
8 3.5 8 2
9 4.5 11 5
10 2.9 8 7
Table 2: Item information

a) Formulate an ILP model.

b) Solve your model.
c) Relax the integer constraints and solve.
d) Round your solution both up and down and compare it with the integer solution. How does this
compare and what can you say integer programming and linear programming problems?
(20 marks)
Part B
4. Telecommunications giant Yodafone wishes to open a number of new shops on the high street. They have
identified 6 potential locations, each of which is able to serve a few neighbouring regions. For each potential
location you have been given data on which regions can be served and the monthly operational cost (table
3). In addition to this, you have been given data on each region which includes the expected number of
customers per month and how much each customer is expected to spend (revenue) in that month (table 4).
Yodafone also need to consider what their budget is for the total (monthly) operational cost for the shops
that they choose to open.

Yodafone would like to model the following two options for comparison:

Option 1
Cover all regions and minimise the total (monthly) operational cost.
What is the total (monthly) expected revenue, the total (monthly) operational cost and thus the total
expected profit (total expected revenue – total operational cost)?

Option 2
Yodafone may not wish to cover all regions, perhaps it might be more profitable to only cover a select few.
Maximise the total expected revenue.
How does changing the budget affect the total expected profit (total expected revenue – total operational
cost)?

Yodafone require you to:

• Produce models to assist them in their decision making.
• Solve these models providing recommendations on which stores to open and the required budget
for the total (monthly) operational costs.
• Further discuss these models and their solutions and suggest possible improvements to the model.
Also, discuss what further information Yodafone could collect to help enhance the modelling
process?

Location Serves Regions Operational Cost (monthly)

1 2, 5, 6 £60000
2 1, 5, 7 £40000
3 2, 8 £70000
4 1, 3, 4 £50000
5 3, 6, 7 £35000
6 4, 5, 7 £40000
Table 3: Location data

Region Expected No. of Customers (monthly) Expected Revenue per Customer (monthly)
1 5000 £20
2 2500 £30
3 3750 £25
4 4000 £22
5 5000 £18
6 2500 £28
7 3000 £26
8 500 £38
Table 4: Region data

(50 marks)