Minco Inc. is a small company in Midway, Tennessee, which makes fused magnesia and silica.2 In the beginning of the 1990s, Minco’s continuous improvement efforts led it to look for a capacity and production planning software. To prepare for the use of software, a spreadsheet was first used to determine the capacity requirements for the main equipment (the fusion furnaces) and the production schedule for the main products. A major product had the following forecast sales and committed orders (all in thousand pounds):

The initial inventory was 119,000 pounds. The scheduler decided to use a lot size of 100.000 pounds per week and the minimum safety stock at the end of each week was to be 83,000 pounds.
a. Prepare a production schedule for this product for the next seven weeks
b. Determine the available-to-promise inventory' for tire next seven weeks.