Question 2: Dum-Dum Sales, Inc. runs a call center to sell tickets to JHU sporti

Question

Question 2:
Dum-Dum Sales, Inc. runs a call center to sell tickets to JHU sporting events. Calls requesting tickets for the upcoming basketball game come in at a rate of 100 per hour. Dum-Dum Sales currently uses a single phone operator who can process 140 such requests per hour. This operator earns $20 per hour for the job. (All inter-arrival and service times are exponentially distributed.) Fred Dum-Dum, one of the company co-owners, is considering firing the company phone operator and replacing him with two students he met at a party last night. Since these workers would be new he estimates that they each could serve 60 customers per hour, and that he would only have to pay them $15 each. Fred’s twin sister, Ethel is the other co-owner and has asked Fred the following questions about the proposition.

a. “Fred, you are really a dum-dum. Since the total processing rate for these two
operators is only 120 calls per hour, the new system will obviously have longer
waiting times.” Is Ethel correct?
b. If having customers on hold costs Dum-Dum Sales 10 cents per minute, which system
has the lowest total cost? (Hint total cost means total salaries per minute plus the cost
of having customers on hold for that minute. Do not include the cost of the customer
being served.)

Explanation / Answer

a. No... Ethel is not correct... Since two persons working means both are taking calls simultaneously whereas earlier just one person was taking the calls...hence it would result in less waiting times... b. It would be less for the second case since the lesser customers will be kept waiting and hence lower hold costs... I dont think there is any way to calculate the actuall costs...

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