Santa Cruz Bottling is a manufacturer of organic soft drinks on the coast of central California. Its products are enjoying a growing reputation and increased demand throughout the American Southwest. Because of the high cost of transporting soft drinks, it is considering a new plant to serve the states of New Mexico and Arizona. A key concern in its search for a new location is the resultant transportation costs to serve its key markets. Following is a list of cities where its main wholesale customers are located, along with estimated annual demand in cases of product for each:

City x-coordinate y-coordinate Number of cases Phoenix 250 250 25,000 Tucson 350 125 20,000 Albuquerque 800 450 28,000 Santa Fe 850 520 17,000

a. Use the centroid method to recommend a location for the new bottling plant. Round your coordinates to one decimal place.

b. Do you have any concerns about the result? How would you deal with them?

LO15-2