In: Statistics and Probability
The Europa Company has a large warehouse in Florida to store its inventory of goods until they are needed by the company’s many furniture stores in that area. A single crew with four members is used to unload and/or load each truck that arrives at the loading dock of the warehouse. Management currently is downsizing to cut costs, so a decision needs to be made about the future size of this crew.
Trucks arrive randomly at the loading dock at a mean rate of 2 per hour. The time required by a crew to unload and/or load a truck has an exponential distribution with a mean given by (60/n) minutes where n is crew size. The cost of providing each member of the crew is $20 per hour. The cost that is attributable to having a truck not in use (i.e., a truck standing at the loading dock) is estimated to be $30 per hour.