Coca-Cola Great Britain offers more than 80 drinks across 20 different brands. The company distributes its drinks to four regions—West Midlands, East Midlands, South East, and South West — from its bottling plants at Yorkshire and Sidcup. The transportation cost in pounds per truckload of drinks from the bottling plants to the regional distribution centers is provided in the table. 1. West Midlands 2. East Midlands 3. South East 4.

South West Available bottles

(in truckloads)

A. Yorkshire £2,000 £1,200 £1,000 £1,300 200 B. Sidcup £3,000 £800 £1,000 £1,500 250 Demand (in truckloads) 130 120 100 100 For quality reasons, the West Midlands wants at least 40% of its total supply from the Sidcup plant and the South West needs at least 20% of its supply from the Sidcup plant. Coca-Cola wants to minimize its distribution cost.

a. Formulate this problem as a linear programming model and solve it using computer.

b. If the transportation cost per truckload between Yorkshire and East Midlands is decreased by £100, how does this affect the optimal solution?