Case study cinema paradiso excel file
Format AMA
Volume of 500 – 2500 words (6 pages)
Assignment type : Math Assignment
Description
Background: Cinema Paradiso is an independent online DVD rental company. Twelve years ago it was one of many small companies renting DVDs online in UK. Today, next to Amazon’s Lovefilm-By-Post, it is the only company offering this type of service. For more details on Cinema Paradiso please visit the company’s web-site. You can learn about basics of online DVD rental business through this page. Problem Description: The problem that we will be discussing is the allocation problem that Cinema Paradiso has to solve on a daily basis. Every day, the company will have an updated list of customers who are due to be sent either one, two or three discs that day. All the customers have their Wish Lists of the movies ranked in order of preference, where the movie on the 1st position is the most preferred one to be received in the next dispatch. The collection of all the Wish Lists of all the customers who need to be sent one or more discs on the day can be used to identify the collection of discs from where the company needs to choose which ones to send to which customers. Cinema Paradiso has only a limited number of discs available for each movie and may not be able to satisfy all their customers if, for example, many of them want the same movie on the same day. The Main Requirement: The main requirement for you is to create an allocation model (process, system) that would help the company to maximise overall satisfaction of its customers. Because discs are being sent to customers every day, the collection of all the Wish Lists and the stock levels of the corresponding discs is different on different days. Allocation has to be done every day and so the allocation model will have to be fast and flexible enough to work for any possible combination of Wish Lists and stock levels of the corresponding discs. Additional Requirements: The value of the allocation model would be greatly improved if you manage to incorporate some of the features identified as very desirable to have by Cinema Paradiso. 1. The first one is the ability of the model to allow for prioritisation of customers. Cinema Paradiso classifies its customers based on their life-time value into three categories (1 = best, 2 = medium, 3 = low). The priority value of each customer is known and you would just need to specify how to make the best use of these values within the allocation model. 2. The second feature is related to different levels of “criticality” of different customers on different days. From experience, Cinema Paradiso knows that the most likely cause for customers leaving the company is when they keep receiving movies deep down from their Wish List or if they do not receive their top ranked movies several times in a row. The “criticality” value of each customer is calculated and updated on a daily basis. Currently, without having any automated allocation system, Cinema Paradiso allocates discs to the set of the most “critical” customers first and then to all the other “not-so-critica
