Name in Full: _____________________________________________

Part I: CPM/PERT
Consider two project networks as below (Modification of Problems #16 & 17, page
449450 of text by Winston, with modifications):
Project #1

Project #2

For each project network above:

a. Using the forward pass & backward pass procedures, compute the early time (ET)
and late time (LT) for each node.
b. Find the critical path. What is the earliest completion time for each project?
c. Draw the corresponding A-O-N (activity on node) network for each project .
In the case of project #2, assume that the durations specified on the network are the
expected values (in days), but that the actual durations are random variables. Also assume

that the standard deviations of all of the activities are 20% of the expected values. (E.g.,
the duration of activity L has mean 6 days and standard deviation 1.2 days.)
d. Assuming (as does PERT) that the critical path found in (c) is always critical, what
is the expected length and the standard deviation of the length of the critical path?
e. Assuming (as does PERT) that the length of the critical path is normally distributed, what
is the probability that project #2 is completed within 29 days?

Part II: Crashing the Project

Read both Appendices A and B attached, and then, solve the following problem:
The 21st Century Studios is about to begin the production of its most important (and most
expensive) movie of the year. The movies producer, Dusty Hoffmer, has decided to use
PERT/CPM to help plan and control this key project. He has identified the eight major
activities (labeled A, B, . . . , H) required to produce the movie. Their precedence
relationships are shown in the table below.
Activity

Immediate
predecessors

C, E

D, F

Dusty now has learned that another studio also will be coming out with a blockbuster
movie during the middle of the upcoming summer, just when his movie was to be
released. This would be very unfortunate timing. Therefore, he and the top management
of 21st Century Studios have concluded that they must accelerate production of their
movie and bring it out at the beginning of the summer (14 weeks from now) to establish it
as THE movie of the year. Although this will require substantially increasing an already
huge budget, management feels that this will pay off in much larger box office earnings
both nationally and internationally. Dusty now wants to determine the least costly way of
meeting the new deadline 14 weeks hence. Using the CPM method of timecost trade-offs,
he has obtained the following data.

(a) Formulate a linear programming model to find the least costly way of meeting the
new deadline.
(b) Solve the problem using LINGO (or other LP solver) and describe the optimal
solution briefly in plain English.

Appendix A
(Winstons OR text (4th edition), page 433-434)

Appendix B
(Winstons OR text (4th edition), page 439-441)