The project was allocated in teams of 4 – 5 members each to work on each task. Our group members were quite supportive when the tasks were divided as each one of us was eager to work on each and every task of the project. The only thing that didn’t go well was that one of our group members never showed up to meetings, class or even in the presentation so we were left with just 3 members in the team. I would change the allocation of tasks next time as Surafel(one of my team members) and I were working together for the linear formulation and the SAS code for extensions which took a lot of our time in the project. It would have been a better idea if we would have divided this task as well to complete it as earlier as possible. I would want to talk to the organization people who gave the presentation to understand the cost required to upgrade each pump for cost benefit analysis which I missed to ask this time and then I would want to apply that understanding to provide even better results in cost benefit analysis section.
Learning visualization using tableau:
Attending forums provided us an idea to use tableau which would be an efficient way to visualize the optimal schedules for each resource available in the water network system. Tableau helps to visualize the data in an efficient way so that better investigations and actions could be taken to understand the valuable insights hidden in the data\cite{McDaniel_2013}. Thus, the user-friendly tool assisted us to have better graphs with various useful insights about the activation status of the pumps and valves which in turn helped in the cost benefit analysis discussions. Being a naïve user of tableau made work a bit time-consuming which was the only hurdle during the report formulation but the final results were satisfying. If I could do the case study again I would provide some more visualizations in the report to explain our analysis and therefore, in the future I would want to explore more of Tableau and find even better ways of visualization which were not explored due to time constraint. This made me realize the extensive use of tableau that can be scaled to other projects as well which would be a better way to explain the analysis.
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Conclusion:
This case study helped us to achieve an optimal 24 hour schedule for the Suez water distribution network in such a way that all the constraints are met with a minimized cost upto $1910.5 which was further reduced to $1905.22 with the additional extension constraints that helped further improve the water supply and demand in the network. Further analysis also helped us to claim that with increased efficiency, Cornwall pump would provide improved profit to the organization. The compound growth of population by 10% also revealed that there is a need to upgrade the existing system which would become infeasible after the third year. This case study helps to understand the need of a proper agile approach to build any solution as the requirement of a particular project or any solution changes with time that requires some alterations in the overall solution as well which helps us to understand several future opportunities that could be included in any working scenario or solution.