The president of a consulting firm wants to minimize the total number of hours it will take to complete four projects for a new client

Accordingly, she has estimated the time it should take for each of her top consultants—Charlie, Gerald, Johnny, and Rick—to complete any of the four projects, as follows:

Project Hours
Consultant A B C D
Charlie 13 16 11 18
Gerald 13 15 10 12
Johnny 15 11 20 15
Rick 17 17 12 22

(a) What is the total number of hours required by the following arbitrary assignment?
Charlie?B; Gerald?A; Johnny?D; Rick?C
(b) What is the optimal assignment of consultants to projects? (Use the assignment method.)
(c) For the optimal schedule, what is the total number of hours it will take these consultants to complete these projects?

(a) 16 + 13 + 15 + 12 = 56 hours (b) The table appears below. (c) 48 hours.

Project A Project B Project C Project D
Charlie 1 0 0 0
Gerald 0 0 0 1
Johnny 0 1 0 0
Rick 0 0 1 0