Reference no: EM132366721
Business Analytics and Data Intelligence Assignment - Project
Unit Learning Outcomes -
a. Demonstrate advanced and integrated understanding of business and data Intelligence for organisational decision-making.
b. Analyse critically, reflect on and synthesise techniques of data visualisation and data mining.
c. Demonstrate advanced and integrated understanding of business analytical models.
d. Critically analyse, synthesise and reflect on decision analysis techniques to develop optimal strategy.
Assignment Description - The assignment is designed to allow you to demonstrate effective business analytics skills using optimisation methods. you will need to use linear programming to formulate and model a problem, and Excel solver will be used to conduct the analytics and obtain the solutions. For this assignment you are required to form a group of 4 students.
Each group needs to select a company from the list below or to create a fictitious company and use the company's website to collect some background information and any type of information that could help in formulating the optimisation problem of the company. You will realise that there is no direct information about optimisation problems of the company of choice, therefore you will need to use the company's background information to formulate the problem. For instance for an airline the problem could be assignment of terminals, airplanes, flights and pilots. Accordingly and based on the background information that you collect, you need to make assumptions and build up a model for the company and solve the problem. This will be possible by using the knowledge developed during the course of the trimester.
The problem could be in the areas such as Transportation, Transshipment, or Assignment problems. As an example of company/business you can choose any company in airline or Metro train industries (for assignment problem), in manufacturing or port shipment industries (for transhipment or transportation problem). Below is a list of companies and possible problems that could be solved using transportation, transhipment or assignment methods. Below is example of companies/organisations that could be used for the analysis:
Transportation problem by manufacturing and mining companies:
- BHP (Transportation of minerals from origin to destination)
- Rio Tinto (Transportation of minerals from origin to destination)
- Ford (Transportation of parts from a manufacturer to dealer)
- Holden (Transportation of parts from a manufacturer to dealer)
- Toyota (Transportation of parts from a manufacturer to dealer)
Transshipment problem by manufacturing companies:
- Ford (Transportation of parts from a manufacturer to dealer)
- Holden (Transportation of parts from a manufacturer to dealer)
- Toyota (Transportation of parts from a manufacturer to dealer)
Assignment problem by sales/servicing companies/organisations:
- Qantas (assignment of terminals, airplanes, flights)
- Jet Star (assignment of terminals, airplanes, flights)
- Virgin (assignment of terminals, airplanes, flights)
- Metro trains (assignment of trains to different lines)
- Trams (assignment of trams to different lines)
- Melbourne royal hospital (assignment of nurses to different shifts)
- St. Vincent hospital (assignment of surgeons, operating theatres based on availability)
Assignment requirement -
Choose a company from the list or create your own company.
Make assumptions about the problem before formulating the problem and modeling.
Formulate a Linear Programming problem (LP).
After formulating the problem define the following:
- Define decision variables.
- Define objective functions.
- Define constraints.
Implement the model
- Run the analysis and solve the problem.
- Run sensitivity analysis using excel solver.
- Prepare Excel output of the model using excel solver.
Assignment structure -
Introduction to the company
Selection of the company
- assumptions about the problem before formulating the problem and modelling
Problem definition
- Identification and description of the problem to be analysed
Model design:
- Formulation of Liner Programming problem (LP)
- Defining decision variables
- Defining objective functions
- Defining constraints
Model implementation:
- Run the analysis and get the solutions
- Run sensitivity analysis using excel solver
- Prepare excel output of the model
- Interpret the results
Indication of optimal solution to the problem:
- Indicate solved problem from excel solver
Recommendation and conclusion
Structure and presentation of the assignment
Appendix (should include excel solver output).