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Technical auditors control warranty parts randomly and they evaluate whether the specified warranty procedure is implemented in a correct manner or not, they also control technical equipment used in the service stations. Each technical auditor is responsible for a set of service partners and each set constitutes a region. After each technical audit, the audited parts are collected by a third party logistics company. Of course, It Is necessary to Inform this third party company in advance about the tattling of the vaults as well as the required capacity of the truck assignment.
The company states that this problem can be handled considering the following two issues: 1 ) Assignment of service stations to four regions (self-formed regions not the geographical ones): The business volume of After-Sales Services needs to be analyzed and each service station should be assigned to one of the 4 technical auditors while considering the balance of business volumes and auditors constraints. 2) Visits of the technical auditors to the service stations (route planning): Service partners should be visited on a periodical basis according to the business volumes ND some business constraints while maligning the transportation costs.
The company urges that issues such as legal requirements, workforce availability, investment and operational costs and any special regional or other requirements of a given service station should be carefully accounted for in the solution effort. Based on this, the problem Is defined as follows: process that focuses on optimization of the audit activities. This system should determine the frequency of visits to service stations and the routes along the visits to ultimate stations in such a way to keep the traveling and personnel costs low while ensuring a high quality service at all stations.
Critically evaluate this problem definition and shortly answer the following. A) State the two most important and desirable characteristics of the problem definition. Write a single clear sentence for each to Justify why you think that these are desirable characteristics. Mentioning the following quote “while ensuring a high quality service at all stations” is a desirable characteristic of the problem definition because it implies that many should not disregard high quality service when meeting other objectives.
In the problem when the route planning is mentioned, it is also correlated to keeping the traveling and personnel costs low which is a desirable characteristics of the problem definition because company’s one of the aims is minimizing costs during the operations. B) State the two most important and undesirable characteristics of the problem are undesirable characteristics. We think that while mentioning the frequency of visits to the service stations, over problem definition should regard service stations according to the regions which should be defined with respect to business volumes.
In the problem definition there is no information about the third party logistics company, however mentioning capacity of trucks regarding business volumes and informing logistics company about timing of audit technical visits may result in a more accurate problem definition. C) Propose a better problem definition and write at most four sentences to Justify why you think your definition is good. Do not compare your definition with the existing A decision support system should be designed to aid in the decision making process focusing on optimization of the audit activities.
This system should determine the frequency of visits to service stations addressed according to business volumes and the routes including along the visits of both technical audit and logistics company to multiple stations in such a way to keep the traveling and personnel costs low while ensuring high quality service and capacity of trucks regarding both business volumes and timing of visits at all stations. Focusing on optimization of audit activities is important because all process is surrounded by audit activities.
Addressing service stations according to business volume is necessary in order to determine frequency of visits. When routes including along the visits of both technical audit and logistics company to multiple stations are decided, keeping the traveling and personnel costs low and ensuring high quality service are desirable characteristics of the problem definition. Since not to determine capacity of trucks regarding both business volumes and timing of visits will cause waste in the system.