The Makonsel Company is a fully integrated company that both produces goods and sells them at its retail outlets. After production, the goods are stored in the companys two warehouses until needed by the retail outlets. Trucks are used to transport the goods from the two plants to the warehouses, and then from the warehouses to the three retail outlets.

Using units of full truckloads, this table below shows each plants monthly output, its shipping cost per truckload sent to each warehouse, and the maximum amount that it can ship per month to each warehouse.

From/To	Unit shipping cost	Shipping capacity	Output
Warehouse 1	Warehouse 2	Warehouse 1	Warehouse 2
Plant 1	$425	$560	125	150	200
Plant 2	$510	$600	175	200	300

For each retail outlet (RO), this table shows its monthly demand, its shipping cost per truckload from each warehouse (WH), and the maximum amount that can be shipped per month from each warehouse.

From/To	Unit shipping cost	Shipping capacity
RO1	RO2	RO3	RO1	RO2	RO3
WH1	$470	$505	$490	100	150	100
WH2	$390	$410	$440	125	150	75
Demand	150	200	150

Management wants to determine a distribution plan (number of truckloads shipped per month from each plant to each warehouse and from each warehouse to each retail outlet) that will minimize the total shipping cost.

Draw a network that depicts the companys distribution network. Identify the supply nodes, transshipment nodes, and demand nodes in this network. Build a model on Excel and then use Excel Solver to to find the optimal solution.

QUESTION 1: What is the optimal distribution plan from plants to warehouses?

From / To	Warehouse 1	Warehouse 2
Plant 1	?	?
Plant 2	?	?

QUESTION 2: What is the optimal distribution plan from warehouses to retail outlets?

From / To	Retail Outlet 1	Retail Outlet 2	Retail Outlet 3
Warehouse 1	?	?	?
Warehouse 2	?	?	?

QUESTION 3: What is the total cost of the optimal distribution plan?