In the spirit of learning by doing, in this module you will have the opportunity to try your skill at vehicle assignment. In this game, you are given a simple route network consisting of three stops (a, b and c) that are directly connected. That is, the routes include bus trips from a to b and b to a, b to c and c to b, and c to b and b to c.

Together with this network, you are given a simple timetable, consisting of 8 pieces of work. Each piece of work represents a bus trip in revenue service. You also have the option of including dead-heading trips between any node. Due to the efficiencies of carrying no passengers, these dead-heading trips take less time than the actual service trips. However, the dead-heading trips add to the total cost of the vehicle assignment, since one must still pay the bus operating costs (bus wear and tear and operator wages).

Your job is to come up with a vehicle assignment that is both feasible, in the sense that the requisite buses can make their assignments, and tries to achieve the minimum possible cost.

More formally, feasibility in this case means:

· No bus can do more than one piece of work at a time. In the game, this means that none of the pieces of work for a given bus can overlap in time.

· A bus must actually be located at a given location (a, b or c) in order to start a piece of work at that location.

· All pieces of work must be assigned to a bus.

Costs in the game are assigned as follows:

· The use of a bus in the assignment costs 50 points. This is similar to the amortized capital cost of a bus for one year (i.e., about $50,000).

· For each hour the bus is in operation (whether in revenue service, dead-heading, or idling between pieces of work), the cost is 10 points. This is similar to the operating cost of a bus for one hour each day for one year (i.e., about $10,000).

In this game, you are expected to come up with a feasible solution that achieves the lowest possible cost.

Keep in mind that this is a very simple network with a very modest set of pieces of work. Imagine doing this for hundreds of buses, with thousands or even tens of thousands of pieces of work!