The Pointy-haired boss has five projects to assign and decides to go against all convention and assign them to individuals rather than project teams.He has the Elbonians estimate the labor cost in dollars of each possible assignment and that information is summarized in the table. What are the components of the objective function associated with Project 3?
A)29DiP3 + 25WaP3 + 22AlP3 + 34AsP3 + 20DoP3 = 1
B)29DiP3 + 25WaP3 + 22AlP3 + 34AsP3 + 20DoP3 ≤ 1
C)DiP1 + WaP1 + AlP1 + AsP1 + DoP1 = 1
D)29DiP3 + 25WaP3 + 22AlP3 + 34AsP3 + 20DoP3

Question

The Pointy-haired boss has five projects to assign and decides to go against all convention and assign them to individuals rather than project teams.He has the Elbonians estimate the labor cost in dollars of each possible assignment and that information is summarized in the table.  What are the components of the objective function associated with Project 3?
A)29DiP3 + 25WaP3 + 22AlP3 + 34AsP3 + 20DoP3 = 1 
B)29DiP3 + 25WaP3 + 22AlP3 + 34AsP3 + 20DoP3 ≤ 1 
C)DiP1 + WaP1 + AlP1 + AsP1 + DoP1 = 1 
D)29DiP3 + 25WaP3 + 22AlP3 + 34AsP3 + 20DoP3

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The objective function is the expression that summarizes the goal of the optimization problem. In this case, the goal is to minimize the labor cost of the assignments. The components of the objective function associated with Project 3 are the labor costs estimated for each person (Di, Wa, Al, As, and Do) multiplied by the corresponding decision variable (P3). Therefore, the objective function for Project 3 is: 
29DiP3 + 25WaP3 + 22AlP3 + 34AsP3 + 20DoP3. 
Option D shows the correct expression for the objective function without any constraints or limits, so it is the best choice.

The Pointy-Haired Boss Has Five Projects to Assign and Decides