Question

d) Assign tasks to work station using this rule: Assign the tasks according to greatest number of following tasks. In case of a tie, use the tie breaker of assigning the task with the longest processing time first.

Task	Immediate predecessor	Task time (minutes)
a	--	0.2
b	a	0.4
c	b	0.2
d	--	0.4
e	d	1.2
f	c	1.2
g	e, f	1

Answer 1

Sol: This is a classic case of critical path question. Here the key to the solution is charting the process flow of the tasks.

Let's Chart it out:

                                    

The chain of tasks is as provided above. The process flow has been prepared keeping in mind that the preceding tasks has to be completed for the next task to be taken up. eg:task-b has to be preceded by task-a or in other words task-b can happen only once task-a is completed.

We can observe that the total time periods for the 2 different task chains are:

1. a- b- c- f- g takes total of 3 minutes(0.2+0.4+0.2+1.2+1 minutes) to complete

2. d- e- f takes a total of 2.6 minutes(0.4+1.2+1 minutes) to complete

Hence the chain of tasks with the greatest number of tasks is a- b-c-f-g