Assignment # 2

Formulate the following linear programming models and use Excel Solver to find the optimal
solution of each problem.
Q1: Island Publishing Company publishes two types of magazines on a monthly basis: a
restaurant and entertainment guide and a real estate guide. The company distributes the
magazines free to businesses, hotels, and stores on Hilton Head Island in South Carolina. The
company’s profits come exclusively from the paid advertising in the magazines. Each of the
restaurant and entertainment guides distributed generates $0.50 per magazine in advertising
revenue, whereas the real estate guide generates $0.75 per magazine. The real estate magazine is
a more sophisticated publication that includes color photos, and accordingly it costs $0.25 per
magazine to print, compared with only $0.17 for the restaurant and entertainment guide. The
publishing company has a printing budget of $4,000 per month. There is enough rack space to
distribute at most 18,000 magazines each month. In order to entice businesses to place
advertisements, Island Publishing promises to distribute at least 8,000 copies of each magazine.
The company wants to determine the number of copies of each magazine it should print each
month in order to maximize advertising revenue. Formulate a linear programming model for this
problem and solve it using excel.

Q2: Mega-Mart, a discount store chain, is to build a new store in Rock Springs. The parcel of
land the company has purchased is large enough to accommodate a store with 140,000 square
feet of floor space. Based on marketing and demographic surveys of the area and historical data
from its other stores, Mega-Mart estimates its annual profit per square foot for each of the store’s
departments to be as shown in the table.
Each department must have at least 15,000 square feet of floor space, and no department can
have more than 20% of the total retail floor space. Men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing plus
housewares keep all their stock on the retail floor; however, toys, electronics, and auto supplies
keep some items (such as bicycles, televisions, and tires) in inventory. Thus, 10% of the total
retail floor space devoted to these three departments must be set aside outside the retail area for
stocking inventory. Mega-Mart wants to know the floor space that should be devoted to each
department in order to maximize profit.

a) Formulate a linear programming model for this problem.

Q3: Metro Food Services Company delivers fresh sandwiches each morning to vending
machines throughout the city. The company makes three kinds of sandwiches—ham and cheese,
bologna, and chicken salad. A ham and cheese sandwich requires a worker 0.45 minutes to
assemble, a bologna sandwich requires 0.41 minutes, and a chicken salad sandwich requires 0.50
minutes to make. The company has 960 available minutes each night for sandwich assembly.
Vending machine capacity is available for 2,000 sandwiches each day. The profit for a ham and
cheese sandwich is $0.35, the profit for a bologna sandwich is $0.42, and the profit for a chicken
salad sandwich is $0.37. The company knows from past sales records that its customers buy as
many ham and cheese sandwiches as the other two sandwiches combined, if not more so, but
customers need a variety of sandwiches available, so Metro stocks at least 200 of each. Metro
management wants to know how many of each sandwich it should stock to maximize profit.
Formulate a linear programming model for this problem and solve it using excel.

Q4: Exeter Mines produces iron ore at four different mines; however, the ores extracted at each
mine are different in their iron content. Mine 1 produces magnetite ore, which has a 70% iron
content; mine 2 produces limonite ore, which has a 60% iron content; mine 3 produces pyrite
ore, which has a 50% iron content; and mine 4 produces taconite ore, which has only a 30% iron
content. Exeter has three customers that produce steel—Armco, Best, and Corcom. Armco needs
400 tons of pure (100%) iron, best requires 250 tons of pure iron, and Corcom requires 290 tons.
It costs $37 to extract and process 1 ton of magnetite ore at mine 1, $46 to produce 1 ton of
limonite ore at mine 2, $50 per ton of pyrite ore at mine 3, and $42 per ton of taconite ore at
mine 4. Exeter
can extract 350 tons of ore at mine 1; 530 tons at mine 2; 610 tons at mine 3; and 490 tons at
mine 4. The company wants to know how much ore to produce at each mine in order to
minimize
cost and meet its customers’ demand for pure (100%) iron.

Q5: Tracy McCoy has committed to the local PTA to make some items for a bake sale on
Saturday.
She has decided to make some combination of chocolate cakes, loaves of white bread, custard
pies, and sugar cookies. Thursday evening she goes to the store and purchases 20 pounds of
flour, 10 pounds of sugar, and 3 dozen eggs, which are the three main ingredients in all the baked
goods she is thinking about making. The following table shows how much of each of the main
ingredients is required for each baked good:

There are 18.5 cups in a 5-pound bag of flour and 12 cups in a 5-pound bag of sugar. Tracy plans
to get up and start baking on Friday morning after her kids leave for school and finish before
they return after soccer practice (8 hours). She knows that the PTA will sell a chocolate cake for
$12, a loaf of bread for $8, a custard pie for $10, and a batch of cookies for $6. Tracy wants to
decide how many of each type of baked good she should make in order for the PTA to make the
most money possible. Formulate a linear programming model for this problem and solve using
Excel solver.