The campaign headquarters of Debbie Smith, a candidate for the Board of Supervis

Question

The campaign headquarters of Debbie Smith, a candidate for the Board of Supervisors, has 100 volunteers. With one week to go in the election, there are three major strategies remaining: media advertising, door-to-door canvassing, and telephone campaigning. It is estimated that each phone call will take approximately four minutes and each door-to-door personal contact will average seven minutes. These times include time between contacts for breaks, transportation, dialing, etc. Volunteers who work on advertising will not be able to handle any other duties. Each ad will utilize the talents of three workers for the entire week.

Volunteers are expected to work 12 hours per day during the final seven days of the campaign. At a minimum, Debbie Smith feels she needs 30,000 phone contacts, 20,000 personal contacts, and three advertisements during the last week. However, she would like to see 50,000 phone contacts and 50,000 personal contacts made and five advertisements developed. It is felt that advertising is 50 times as important as personal contacts, which in turn is twice as important as phone contacts.

Formulate this goal programming problem with a single weighted priority to determine how the work should be distributed during the final week of the campaign.

Explanation / Answer

Total nos. of man hours of 100 volunteers working 2 hours a day for seven days = 100*12*7=8400

50000phone calls will take 50000*4/60 hours=3333.3333man hours

50000 personal contacts will take 50000*7/60=5833.3333mnhours

5 ads will take 5*3*7*12= 1260 mandays

hence total man days needed= 3333.3333+5833.3333+608=10426.6666 man hours

since we have only 8400 man hours available we have to reduce time on phone calls by 50% saving 3333.3333/2=1666.66665 hours

10426.6666-1666.6666= 8760man hours

hence we can do 10 ads 25000phone calls and 4950 personal contacts in 7 days working 12 hours a day with 100 volunteers

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