A company manufactures mechanical heart valves from the heart valves of pigs. Different heart operations require valves of different sizes. The company purchases pig valves from three different suppliers. The cost and size mix of the valves purchased from each supplier are given in the file P03_36.xlsx. This file also contains the maximum number of values available from each supplier per month. Each month, the company places an order with each supplier. At least 1,300 large, 900 medium, and 400 small valves must be purchased each month. Use Solver to determine how the company can minimize the cost of acquiring the needed valves.

a. What is the optimized cost of acquiring the needed valves? Round your answer to a whole dollar amount. $ ________

How many valves should the company purchase from each of the three suppliers? Round your answers to whole numbers.

Purchases

Supplier 1 _________

Supplier 2 __________

Supplier 3 _________

b. Use SolverTable to investigate the effect on total cost of increasing its minimal purchase requirements each month. Specifically, see how the total cost changes as the minimal purchase requirements of large, medium, and small valves all increase from their original values by the same percentage. Revise your model so that SolverTable can be used to investigate these changes when the percentage increase varies from 2% to 40% in increments of 2%. T

he total cost ,(INCREASES, DECREASES, OR REMAINS CONSTANT) as the minimum purchase requirements increase,(AND IT DOES SO, BUT NOT) at a constant rate. However, when the percentage increase reaches______ %, there is not enough capacity to meet such large requirements.

U.S. Labs Data
	Cost/valve	% large	% medium	% small	Max available
Supplier 1	$75	40	40	20	2400
Supplier 2	$65	30	35	35	2000
Supplier 3	$50	20	20	60	1000