Problem 1.

Western Lithium produces a special type of material that is currently in short supply. Four of Western

Lithium’s customers have already placed orders that together exceed the combined capacity of Western Lithium’s two plants. Western Lithium’s management faces the problem of deciding how many units it should supply to each customer. Since the four customers are in different industries, different prices can be charged because of the various industry pricing structures. However, slightly different production costs at the two plants and varying transportation costs between the plants and customers make a “sell to the highest bidder” strategy unacceptable. After considering price, production costs, and transportation costs, Western Lithium has established the following profit per unit for each plantcustomer alternative.

The plant capacities and customer orders are as follows:

A.      Develop an Excel layout and solver model to find a solution for this problem.

B.      How many units should each plant produce for each customer to maximize profits?

1

Problem 2

Anderson and Associates, Inc. is a software development firm that has three new clients. Project teams will be assigned to the three clients. Based on the different backgrounds and experiences of the teams, the various team-client assignments differ in terms of projected completion times. The possible assignments and the estimated completion times in weeks are:

A.      Develop an Excel layout and solver model to find a solution to this problem.

B.      What team assignments will result in the minimum overall completion time?

2