Southeast Soda Pop, Inc., has a new fruit drink for which it has high hopes. John Mittenthal, the production planner, has assembled the following cost data and demand forecast:

Click the icon to view the demand forecast.

Click the icon to view the cost data.

John's job is to develop an aggregate plan. The three initial options he wants to evaluate are:

Plan A: a strategy that hires and fires personnel as necessary to meet the forecast.

Plan B: a level strategy.

Plan C: a level strategy that produces $1,000$ cases per quarter and meets the forecast demand with inventory and subcontracting.

More Info

a$)$ Which strategy is the lowest$-$cost plan?

Try hiring and layoffs $($to meet the forecast$)$ as necessary $($enter your responses as whole numbers$).$

Costs$/$Other Data

$\backslash$table$[[,,$Hiring and Layoff Plan$],[$Quarter$,$Forecast,Production,$\backslash$table$[[$Hire$],[($Units$)]],\backslash$table$[[$Layof$],[($Units$]],],[,,1,200,,,],[1,1,900,1,900,700,0,],[2,1,100,1,100,0,800,],[3,1,600,1,600,500,0,],[4,1,000,1000,0,600,]]$

Previous quarter's output $=1,200$ cases

Beginning inventory $=0$ cases

Stockout cost of backorders $=$$$160$ per case

Inventory holding cost $=$$$45$ per case at end of qu

Hiring employees $=$$$40$ per case

Terminating employees $=$$$80$ per case

Subcontracting cost $=$$$65$ per case

Unit cost on regular time $=$$$25$ per case

Overtime cost $=$$$10$ extra per case

Capacity on regular time $=1,900$ cases per quarts

The total cost, including normal time labor costs, for this hiring and layoffs plan is $$,($enter your response as a whole number$).$