UNIVERSITY OF ZIMBABWE

2016/2017 May/June Examinations

Faculty: ENGINEERING

Department: MECHANICAL

Paper code and Title: ME305 INDUSTRIAL SYSTEMS

ENGINEERING

Duration: 3 HOURS

Examiner: ENG. K MUGWINDIRI /

ENG L K GUDUKEYA

Authorized Materials: Scientific Calculator, Answer Booklet, Graph paper

INSTRUCTIONS:

a. Answer two questions from Section A and two questions from Section
B.

b. Each question carries 25 marks

NB: DO NOT TURN OVER THE QUESTION PAPER OR COMMENCE WRITING

UNTIL INSTRUCTED TO DO SO.
 SECTION A

QUESTION 1

The activities comprising a certain project have been identified as follows:

Activity Preceding Duration

Activity (weeks)

A - 4
B - 7
C - 8
D A 5
E C 4
F B,E 4
G C 11
H G,F 4

Required:

a) For the above project, determine the critical path and its duration. [10 marks]

b) Find the earliest start and latest finish times for each activity of the network and
determine the head event slack for each node. [10 marks]

c) Tasks D and F require the same specialised piece of equipment, which is usually hired. Is it
necessary to hire more than one piece of equipment to complete the project in the minimum
time? [5 marks]

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QUESTION 2

Research from developing country industries shows a significant reduction in preventive

maintenance costs while improving Systems Reliability by using Availability Centred
Maintenance. It is important to identify production and maintenance problems that are related to
key availability factors such as times to failure (reliability), repair times (maintainability) and
waiting times (maintenance support) and use these as a yardstick for adjudging the efficacy of
Availability Centred Maintenance, (ACM). The ACM strategy incorporates both qualitative and
quantitative methods in pursuit of its ultimate goal. Quantitative tools, for example a power
station, include maintenance performance indices such as load factor, availability factor, unit
capability factor, planned outage rates, forced outage rates, unplanned capability loss factor,
number of unplanned automatic grid separations per year, etc.

By using the classical motivation that Maintenance Availability is the product or summation of
Reliability, Maintenance Support performance and Maintainability, show categorically how
Availability Centred Maintenance can be the panacea to struggling developing countries heavy
maintenance dependent industries. [25 marks ]

QUESTION 3

By writing a brief summary, taking into account the following headlines, show how the
statistical process control chart can be a useful, effective and powerful tool to monitor process
deviations and better still controlling to standard industrial system processes.

1) Define.
2) Measure.

3) Compare to standard.

4) Evaluate.

5) Take corrective action.

6) Evaluate corrective action [25 marks ]

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 SECTION B

QUESTION 4

a. Decision types may fall into three groups. Briefly describe these groups. [3 marks]
b. What two factors must be considered before applying Time Series or Extrapolative
Methods? [2 marks]
c. A small machine shop manufactures two models, standard and luxurious. Each
standard model requires two hours of grinding and four hours of polishing, each
luxurious model requires five hours of grinding and two hours of polishing. The
manufacturer has three grinders and two polishers. Therefore in 40 hours week there
are 120 hours of grinding capacity and 80 hours of polishing capacity. There is a
contribution margin of $3 on each standard model and $4 on each deluxe. Use the
simplex method to determine the maximum total contribution and the number of units
of each model required. [12 marks]

d. You are the Projects Engineer of a manufacturing company. You are trying to
determine whether to build a large wing on the existing factory, a small wing or no
wing at all. If the company’s sales continue to grow a large wing could return $150
000 to the company each year. If the small wing were built, it would return $60 000 to
the company each year if the sales continue to grow. If the sales remain the same the
company would encounter a loss of $85 000 if the large wing were built. Furthermore,
a loss of $45 000 would be realised if the small wing were constructed and sales remain
the same. Unfortunately, you do not have any information about the company’s future
sales.

i. Construct a decision tree for the scenario outlined above. [2 marks]

ii. Construct a decision table. [2 marks]
iii. Using the equally likely criterion, determine the best alternative. [4 marks]

QUESTION 5

a. Explain why forecasting is important to an organisation. [4 marks]

b. The dean of the University of Zimbabwe must plan his school’s course offering for the
fall semester. Student demands deem it necessary to offer at least 30 undergraduate and
20 graduate courses in the term. Faculty contracts also dictate that at least 60 courses be
offered in total. Each undergraduate course taught costs the college an average of $2,500
in faculty wages, while each graduate course costs $3,000. Formulate the linear
programming problem and use the graphical method to determine how many
undergraduate and graduate courses the dean should schedule. [5marks]

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 c. Two products, X and Y, both require processing times on machines M1 and M2. Machine
M1 has 200 hours available and machine M2 has 400 hours available. Product X requires
one hour on machine M1 and four hours on machine M2. Product Y requires one hour on
machine M1 and one hour on machine M2. Each unit of product X yields $10 profit and
each unit of Y yields $5 profit.

Use the Graphical method or otherwise to find a solution that will maximise profit.
[12 marks]
d. State four advantages of decision tree analysis. [4 marks]

QUESTION 6

a) A company employs typists on hourly basis. There are five typists for service and their
charges and speeds are different. According to an earlier understanding only one job
is given to one typist and the typist is paid for full hour even if he works for a fraction
of an hour. Find the least cost allocation for the following data: [12 marks]

Rate per
No. of pages Job No. of pages
Typist hour
Typed / hour P 199
(Rs.)
A 5 12 Q 175
B 6 14 R 145
C 3 8 S 198
D 4 10 T 178
E 4 11

b) In Linear Programming

i. What is the limitation of the Graphical method? [1 mark]

ii. What are the advantages and disadvantages of the Simplex method? [4 marks]

c) Given the data in the following table

Period Data Weighting

t Xt
1 28.0 (0.2)
2 27.0 (0.3)
3 33.0 (0.5)
4 25.0
5 34.0
6 33.0 N=3

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 Use the Moving Average Forecasting method to forecast for the periods 4, 5 and 6.

For the same periods calculate:

i. the Error
ii. Mean Absolute Deviation
iii. Mean Square Error
iv. Mean Absolute percentage error [5 marks]

d) Discuss the three main disadvantages of the Moving Average Forecasting method.
[3 marks]

END OF QUESTION PAPER

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