The options Outlook has for handling the seasonality of magazine are adding workers during the peak season, subcontracting out some of the work, building up inventory during the slow months, or building up a backlog of orders that will be delivered late to customers. To determine how to best use these options through an aggregate plan, Outlook`s vice president of Marketing starts with the first task-building a demand forecast. Although Outlook could attempt to forecast this demand itself, a much more accurate forecast comes from a collaborative process used by both Outlook and its retailers to produce the forecast shown in Table (a).

Outlook sells each book through retailers for Rs.40. The company has a starting inventory in January of 1000 books. At the beginning of January the company has a workforce of 80 employees. The company has a total of 20 working days in each month, and each employee earns Rs 4 per hour regular time. Each employee works eight hours per day on straight time and the rest on overtime. The capacity of the publication operation is determined primarily by the total labor hours worked. Therefore, machine capacity does not limit the capacity of the production operation. Because of labor rules, no employee works more than 10 hours of overtime per month. The various costs are shown in Table (b)

Currently, Outlook has no limits on subcontracting, inventories, and stockouts/backlog. All stockouts are backlogged and supplied from the following months’ production. Inventory costs are incurred on the ending inventory in the month. The Marketing manager’s goal is to obtain the optimal aggregate plan that allows Outlook to end June with at least 500 unit (i.e., no stockout at the end of June and a least 500 units in inventory).

Table a:

Period	Demand
0
1	1600
2	3000
3	3200
4	3800
5	2200
6	2200

           

Table b:

Item	Cost
Material cost	Rs.10/unit
Inventory holding cost	Rs.2/unit/month
Marginal cost of stockout/backlog	Rs.5/unit/month
Hiring and training costs	Rs.300/worker
Layoff cost	Rs.500/worker
Labor hours required	4/unit
Regular time cost	Rs.4/hour
Overtime cost	Rs.6/hour
Cost of subcontracting	Rs.30/unit