Operation Managment - Essay Example

n the period of five years, as stated in the case, the number of fire alarms had increased by 96%, putting a strain on the City Fire Departments budget and other resources. Resource allocation, police violence and corruption were some of the problems in the New York Police Department. Resource allocation was also the issue for the ambulance services. In the Fire Project, real life simulation was used as the major model in order to look at the situation. Also, methods such as queuing models for fire company availability, Bayes approach to alarm forecasting, and integer linear programming of fire company relocations.

In the Police Project, real life simulation was also used along with optimization and queuing models in order to provide with staffing alternatives. As for the ambulance services, simulation analysis was also used. For the Fire Project, the major solution that was proposed was the closing of 24 fire company locations and disbandment of ten fire companies. The fire company locations were determined in relation with the area they covered, and dependent on their distance to the area that they could service.

With the use of management science models, it was found out that in order for the NYC to cut down on costs in relation to the effectiveness of the company, this solution was vital. Also, as for deployment, staffing alternatives were created in order to address the issue of the mismatch between the number of fire companies on duty during peak times of fire alarms. The solution was successful that the NYC government sought the use of management scientists in addressing other problems of resource-allocation and deployment.

For the Police Project, staffing alternatives were created from the optimization and queuing models in order to determine the allocation of patrol cars and police officers in different locations of the city that demanded the police services. As for the ambulance services, the solution was to tie up the ambulances to the areas with