At Samantha's company, FashionStar, winter jackets and parkas come in different sizes, but the most popular ones are medium size. The per-unit profit for a winter jacket is $9, and the per-unit profit for a winter parka is $12.50. A medium-size jacket requires approximately 8.5 feet of fabric while a medium-sized parka requires 12.5 feet of fabric. The amount of machine time needed to produce a jacket and a parka is 1.5 hours and two hours respectively. A tailor usually spends about two hours on sewing and stitching for a winter jacket and about 3 hours on a parka. The company has a monthly contract with its supplier to procure 4000 feet of the required fabric. The amount of machine time allocated to producing the two products is 650 hours per month and each month a number of skilled tailors are assigned to these products for approximately 900 hours. Historically FashionStar has never sold more than 150 parkas or 400 jackets in a month and therefore Samantha wants to make sure that the monthly production rate of parkas and winter jackets are no more than these limits.

1. Following the steps below formulate this problem as a linear programming model, and use the Excel solver to find the mix between jackets and parkas. Submit your Excel workbook together with your answer sheet.

Decision variables.

Objective function.

Constraints.

1. Should we try to find more fabric to increase our profits? Why or why not?