Chapter 6, Problem 32QP

The Pigskin Company produces footballs. Pigskin must decide how many footballs to produce each month. The company has decided to use a six-month planning horizon. The forecasted monthly demands for the next six months are 10,000, 15,000, 30,000, 35,000, 25,000, and 10,000. Pigskin wants to meet these demands on time, knowing that it currently has 5000 footballs in inventory and that it can use a given months production to help meet the demand for that month. (For simplicity, we assume that production occurs during the month, and demand occurs at the end of the month.) During each month there is enough production capacity to produce up to 30,000 footballs, and there is enough storage capacity to store up to 10,000 footballs at the end of the month, after demand has occurred. The forecasted production costs per football for the next six months are 12.50, 12.55, 12.70, 12.80, 12.85, and 12.95, respectively. The holding cost incurred per football held in inventory at the end of any month is 5% of the production cost for that month. (This cost includes the cost of storage and also the cost of money tied up in inventory.) The selling price for footballs is not considered relevant to the production decision because Pigskin will satisfy all customer demand exactly when it occursat whatever the selling price is. Therefore. Pigskin wants to determine the production schedule that minimizes the total production and holding costs. Modify the Pigskin model so that there are eight months in the planning horizon. You can make up reasonable values for any extra required data. Dont forget to modify range names. Then modify the model again so that there are only four months in the planning horizon. Do either of these modifications change the optima] production quantity in month 1?

The Pigskin Company produces footballs. Pigskin must decide how many footballs to produce each month. The company has decided to use a six-month planning horizon. The forecasted monthly demands for the next six months are 10,000, 15,000, 30,000, 35,000, 25,000, and 10,000. Pigskin wants to meet these demands on time, knowing that it currently has 5000 footballs in inventory and that it can use a given months production to help meet the demand for that month. (For simplicity, we assume that production occurs during the month, and demand occurs at the end of the month.) During each month there is enough production capacity to produce up to 30,000 footballs, and there is enough storage capacity to store up to 10,000 footballs at the end of the month, after demand has occurred. The forecasted production costs per football for the next six months are 12.50, 12.55, 12.70, 12.80, 12.85, and 12.95, respectively. The holding cost incurred per football held in inventory at the end of any month is 5% of the production cost for that month. (This cost includes the cost of storage and also the cost of money tied up in inventory.) The selling price for footballs is not considered relevant to the production decision because Pigskin will satisfy all customer demand exactly when it occursat whatever the selling price is. Therefore. Pigskin wants to determine the production schedule that minimizes the total production and holding costs. As indicated by the algebraic formulation of the Pigskin model, there is no real need to calculate inventory on hand after production and constrain it to be greater than or equal to demand. An alternative is to calculate ending inventory directly and constrain it to be nonnegative. Modify the current spreadsheet model to do this. (Delete rows 16 and 17, and calculate ending inventory appropriately. Then add an explicit non-negativity constraint on ending inventory.)

It costs a pharmaceutical company 75,000 to produce a 1000-pound batch of a drug. The average yield from a batch is unknown but the best case is 90% yield (that is, 900 pounds of good drug will be produced), the most likely case is 85% yield, and the worst case is 70% yield. The annual demand for the drug is unknown, with the best case being 20,000 pounds, the most likely case 17,500 pounds, and the worst case 10,000 pounds. The drug sells for 125 per pound and leftover amounts of the drug can be sold for 30 per pound. To maximize annual expected profit, how many batches of the drug should the company produce? You can assume that it will produce the batches only once, before demand for the drug is known.

Seas Beginning sells clothing by mail order. An important question is when to strike a customer from the companys mailing list. At present, the company strikes a customer from its mailing list if a customer fails to order from six consecutive catalogs. The company wants to know whether striking a customer from its list after a customer fails to order from four consecutive catalogs results in a higher profit per customer. The following data are available: If a customer placed an order the last time she received a catalog, then there is a 20% chance she will order from the next catalog. If a customer last placed an order one catalog ago, there is a 16% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order two catalogs ago, there is a 12% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order three catalogs ago, there is an 8% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order four catalogs ago, there is a 4% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. If a customer last placed an order five catalogs ago, there is a 2% chance she will order from the next catalog she receives. It costs 2 to send a catalog, and the average profit per order is 30. Assume a customer has just placed an order. To maximize expected profit per customer, would Seas Beginning make more money canceling such a customer after six nonorders or four nonorders?

Scenario 3 Ben Gibson, the purchasing manager at Coastal Products, was reviewing purchasing expenditures for packaging materials with Jeff Joyner. Ben was particularly disturbed about the amount spent on corrugated boxes purchased from Southeastern Corrugated. Ben said, I dont like the salesman from that company. He comes around here acting like he owns the place. He loves to tell us about his fancy car, house, and vacations. It seems to me he must be making too much money off of us! Jeff responded that he heard Southeastern Corrugated was going to ask for a price increase to cover the rising costs of raw material paper stock. Jeff further stated that Southeastern would probably ask for more than what was justified simply from rising paper stock costs. After the meeting, Ben decided he had heard enough. After all, he prided himself on being a results-oriented manager. There was no way he was going to allow that salesman to keep taking advantage of Coastal Products. Ben called Jeff and told him it was time to rebid the corrugated contract before Southeastern came in with a price increase request. Who did Jeff know that might be interested in the business? Jeff replied he had several companies in mind to include in the bidding process. These companies would surely come in at a lower price, partly because they used lower-grade boxes that would probably work well enough in Coastal Products process. Jeff also explained that these suppliers were not serious contenders for the business. Their purpose was to create competition with the bids. Ben told Jeff to make sure that Southeastern was well aware that these new suppliers were bidding on the contract. He also said to make sure the suppliers knew that price was going to be the determining factor in this quote, because he considered corrugated boxes to be a standard industry item. Is Ben Gibson acting legally? Is he acting ethically? Why or why not?

Scenario 3 Ben Gibson, the purchasing manager at Coastal Products, was reviewing purchasing expenditures for packaging materials with Jeff Joyner. Ben was particularly disturbed about the amount spent on corrugated boxes purchased from Southeastern Corrugated. Ben said, I dont like the salesman from that company. He comes around here acting like he owns the place. He loves to tell us about his fancy car, house, and vacations. It seems to me he must be making too much money off of us! Jeff responded that he heard Southeastern Corrugated was going to ask for a price increase to cover the rising costs of raw material paper stock. Jeff further stated that Southeastern would probably ask for more than what was justified simply from rising paper stock costs. After the meeting, Ben decided he had heard enough. After all, he prided himself on being a results-oriented manager. There was no way he was going to allow that salesman to keep taking advantage of Coastal Products. Ben called Jeff and told him it was time to rebid the corrugated contract before Southeastern came in with a price increase request. Who did Jeff know that might be interested in the business? Jeff replied he had several companies in mind to include in the bidding process. These companies would surely come in at a lower price, partly because they used lower-grade boxes that would probably work well enough in Coastal Products process. Jeff also explained that these suppliers were not serious contenders for the business. Their purpose was to create competition with the bids. Ben told Jeff to make sure that Southeastern was well aware that these new suppliers were bidding on the contract. He also said to make sure the suppliers knew that price was going to be the determining factor in this quote, because he considered corrugated boxes to be a standard industry item. As the Marketing Manager for Southeastern Corrugated, what would you do upon receiving the request for quotation from Coastal Products?

LPM Corp. produces and sells two types of frozen burgers, Turkey Burgers and Veggie Burgers. In the most recent month, the firm sold 12,000 Turkey Burgers and 8,000 Veggie Burgers. Turkey Burgers sold for $14.00 per box and variable costs were $7.40 per box. The Veggie Burgers sold for $16.00 per box and variable costs were $8.25 per box. The fixed expenses of the entire company were $41,160. If the sales mix were to shift toward the Turkey Burgers product line with total sales volume remaining constant at 20,000, the overall break-even point for the entire company:

Bernie’s Bike Shop receives the following trade discounts: 20/15/15.  The vendor’s price list indicates that 20 percent off list price is for purchasing bikes in quantities of 100 or more, 15 percent off list price is for assembling the bikes for customers, and 15 percent is for sales promotion and local advertising. If the manufacturer’s list price is $550, what should Bernie pay for each bike if he orders 110 bikes at a time, assembles the bikes, and displays and advertises them?

Formulate the situation in matrix form. Be sure to indicate the meaning of your rows and columns. Find the requested quantities using the appropriate matrix arithmetic. A car dealer sells sedans, station wagons, vans, and pickup trucks at sales lots in Oakdale and Roanoke. The "dealer markup" is the difference between the sticker price and the dealer invoice price. The dealer invoice prices at both locations are the same: $15,000 per sedan, $19,000 per wagon, $24,000 per van, and $26,000 per pickup. The sticker prices at the Oakdale lot are $18,900 per sedan, $23,900 per wagon, $28,900 per van, and $28,900 per pickup, while at the Roanoke lot the sticker prices are $17,900 per sedan, $22,900 per wagon, $26,900 per van, and $30,900 per pickup. Represent these prices as a dealer invoice matrix D and a sticker price matrix S. Use these matrices to find the dealer markup matrix M for these vehicles at these sales lots. (Let row 1 represent the dealer in Oakdale and row 2 represent the…