Problem 8-25 (Algorithmic)

Georgia Cabinets manufactures kitchen cabinets that are sold to local dealers throughout the Southeast. Because of a large backlog of orders for oak and cherry cabinets, the company decided to contract with three smaller cabinetmakers to do the final finishing operation. For the three cabinetmakers, the number of hours required to complete all the oak cabinets, the number of hours required to complete all the cherry cabinets, the number of hours available for the final finishing operation, and the cost per hour to perform the work are shown here:

	Cabinetmaker 1	Cabinetmaker 2	Cabinetmaker 3
Hours required to make all the oak cabinets	47	40	32
Hours required to make all the cherry cabinets	60	43	36
Hours available	40	25	30
Cost per hour	$38	$42	$54

For example, Cabinetmaker 1 estimates that it will take 47 hours to make all the oak cabinets and 60 hours to complete all the cherry cabinets. However, Cabinetmaker 1 only has 40 hours available for the final finishing operation. Thus, Cabinetmaker 1 can only make 40/47 = 0.85, or 85%, of the oak cabinets if it worked only on oak cabinets. Similarly, Cabinetmaker 1 can only make 40/60 = 0.67, or 67%, of the cherry cabinets if it worked only on cherry cabinets.

a) Formulate a linear programming model that can be used to determine the proportion of the oak cabinets and the proportion of the cherry cabinets that should be given to each of the three cabinetmakers in order to minimize the total cost of completing both projects.

Let	O1 = proportion of Oak cabinets assigned to cabinetmaker 1
	O2 = proportion of Oak cabinets assigned to cabinetmaker 2
	O3 = proportion of Oak cabinets assigned to cabinetmaker 3
	C1 = proportion of Cherry cabinets assigned to cabinetmaker 1
	C2 = proportion of Cherry cabinets assigned to cabinetmaker 2
	C3 = proportion of Cherry cabinets assigned to cabinetmaker 3