Exercises Linear Programming

1 XY
A company produces four products on two machines (X and Y). The profit for each kilogram of
product is respectively € 10, € 12, € 17 and € 8. Product 1 MUST be produced on machine X, the
other products CAN be produced on the two machines. Product 1, 2, 3 and 4 need per kilogram,
respectively, 10, 12, 13 and 8 minutes on machine X. Products 2, 3 and 4 need per kilogram,
respectively, 19, 33, and 23 minutes on machine Y. The firm is small, so storage space is limited
(50 m2) and only stock of 1 week can be stored. The place needed for each kilogram of product
(1, 2, 3, 4) is respectively 0.1, 0.15, 0.5 and 0.05 m2. The needs of the customer are that the
quantities to be produced of product 3 are related to the amount to be produced of product 2.
During one week, the amount produced of product 2 should be twice the amount produced of
product 3. During 5% of the time, machine X is down because of maintenance and repair.
Machine Y for 7% of the time.
Imagine a working week of 35 hours. The two machines can run simultaneously.
Formulate the problem as an LP

2 Dorian auto
During the next four quarters, Dorian Auto must meet (on time) the following demands for
cars:
Q1 4000
Q2 2000
Q3 5000
Q4 1000
At the beginning of quarter 1, there are 300 cars in stock, and the company has the capacity to
produce at most 3000 cars per quarter. At the beginning of each quarter, the company can
change production capacity by at most 1000 cars. It costs €100 per additional quarterly car
production capacity. It costs €50 per quarter to maintain one car of production capacity (even if
it is unused during the current quarter). The variable cost of producing a car is € 2000. A holding
cost of € 150 per car is assessed against each quarter’s ending inventory. It is required that at
the end of quarter 4, plant capacity must be at least 4000 cars. Formulate an LP to minimize the
total cost incurred during the next four quarters.
3 Waste collection company
A waste collection and recycling company is hired by a regional government to collect two types
of waste: electronic and electric equipment (EEE) and composite plastics. Composite plastics,
are very hard to recycle and the best way to dispose of them is to burn them with energy
recuperation which all in all costs €1/ton. EEE waste can be partially recycled and actually yields
a profit of € 3/ton.
In order to force the waste company to actually collect composite plastics, the regional
government obliges the company to collect at least 3 tons/year. In addition, for every ton of
EEE waste they collect, they need to collect an additional ton of composite plastics.
As is usually the case in multiple government levels having a say on the same subject matter,
the EU has a directive that actually works the other way around. They require such a waste
company to collect at least 2 tons of EEE waste per year and for every ton of composite
materials that they collect, they need to collect an additional 2 tons of EEE waste.

4 Cargo plane
A cargo plane has three compartments for storing goods: front, middle and rear. These
compartments have the following limits for both weight and volume:

Compartment Weight (ton) Volume (m3)

Front 10 6800
Middle 16 8700
Rear 8 5300

The following four loads are available for shipment on the next flight:

Cargo Weight (ton) Volume (m3 / ton) Profit (€ / ton)

C1 18 480 310
C2 15 650 380
C3 23 580 350
C4 12 390 285

Each division of these loads can be accepted . The goal is to determine how much (if any ) of each
cargo can be accepted and how to distribute it on each of the compartments so that the total
profit for the flight is maximized.

a) Formulate this problem as an LP

b) Suppose the following condition: The weight of the load in the resp . compartments must
be proportional to the capacity of that compartment . After all, the aircraft must be kept
in balance. How would you formulate this condition?
What problem arises then? (Think about this!)
5 Bus company
A bus company believes that it will need the following number of bus drivers during each of the
next five years:
Year 1: 60 drivers
Year 2: 70 drivers
Year 3: 50 drivers
Year 4: 65 drivers
Year 5: 75 drivers
At the beginning of each year, the bus company must decide how many drivers should be hired
or fired. It costs $4000 to hire a driver and $2000 to fire a driver1. A driver’s salary is $10000 per
year.
At the beginning of year 1, the company has 50 drivers. A driver hired at the beginning of a year
may be used to meet that year’s requirements and is paid full salary for that year.
Formulate an LP to minimize the bus company’s salary, hiring, and firing costs over the next five
years.

1
Clearly not an example from Belgium – we cannot fire someone that cheaply
6 Egg packing station
This is an application from recent company project.
An egg packing station has an inflow of eggs coming from chicken farms. These eggs are sorted
based on weight and classified in weight classes: S, M-, M+, L-, L+, XL-, XL+
The packing station needs to pack these eggs into boxes to fulfill orders for different retail
clients. These orders have requirements with regards to minimum weights.
Eggs that cannot be assigned to an order are sent to the breaker where egg white is separated
from yolk and sold to the food processing industry for 7.5 cents
At the start of the day, the following eggs are available:
Weight class S M- M+ L- L+ XL- XL+
# available 6268 39953 81751 60183 19727 3151 230

The following orders need to be fulfilled:

Order #eggs required Price/egg Types allowed

1 28800 0,22 L-, L+
2 7200 0,21 M-, M+
3 9336 0,21 M-, M+
4 2292 0,21 M-, M+
5 18330 0,2 S
6 3984 0,22 L-, L+
7 17000 0,22 L-, L+
8 60000 0,2 S
9 56000 0,21 M-, M+
10 4750 0,21 M-, M+
11 70000 0,21 M-, M+

Formulate an LP that determines the maximum turnover assuming that not all orders need to
be completed.
7 Software development company
A company dedicated to software development manufactures four types of products: video games, classic
games, educational software and software for companies. The human resources are organized into three
sections: Writers, Animation and Assembly. The different characteristics of each product determine the
needs of each resource (in hundreds of hours) and the unit profit (in thousands of euros) according to the
table:

Video games Classic games Educational software Company software

Writers 20 0 10 0
Animation 25 2 10 10
Assembly 10 1 5 20
Profit per unit 40 2 18 20

Knowing that we have 8.000, 8.000 and 20.000 annual hours of the different sections respectively
(Writers, Animation and Assembly) and that the company’s objective is to maximize profits, pose
the problem to be solved by the company in order to plan their annual production optimally.
1. Formulate the problem as an LP.
2. Determine the quantity we need to produce annually of each type of software in order to
maximize our profit (with the Solver function of Excel).
3. What would the effect be on the profit if we produce a video game?
4. How many units of video games do we need to produce if we dispose of only 18.000 hours
annually in the section ‘assembly’?
5. If the profit unit of the software for the company is now 18.000€, what will then be the
new optimum solution? What is the new optimum profit?
6. Calculate and interpret the sensitivity interval for the number of available hours in the
animation section.
7. We expect that the demand for video games will increase in the next year and the
corresponding profit unit. What would be the new optimum solution if the profit unit is
60.000€.
The quality committee of the company has decided that the company’s products must be
tested by experts before being brought to the market. They want to introduce a new section in
which there will be 2.000 hours annually. If the required tests use 450, 15, 50 and 200 hours for
video games, classic games, educational software and software for the company respectively,
what would then be the annual production plan that maximizes profit?
8 Old exam question
An aerospace manufacturing company produces three products: flaps , slats , and exhausts at two
different plants. The cost of producing a unit at each plant is given in the following table:

product
flaps slats exhausts
1 €5 €6 €8
plant
2 €8 €7 € 10

Each plant can produce a total of 10000 units. At least 6000 flaps, at least 8000 slats, and at least 5000
exhausts must be produced.

1. Formulate an LP that minimizes the cost to produces all required products

2. Below, the optimal solution with sensitivity data is given:
a. What would the cost of producing slats at plant 1 have to be for the firm to make this
choice?
b. What would the total cost be if plant 1 had 9000 units of capacity
c. If it cost €9 to produces exhausts at plant 1, then what would be the new optimal
solution?

Optimal solution: Objective function value = 128000

Value Reduced cost Allowable Allowable

increase decrease
Flaps @ plant 1 6000 0 1 7
Slats @ plant 1 0 1 ∞ 1
Exhausts @ plant 1 4000 0 1 1
Flaps @ plant 2 0 1 ∞ 1
Slats @ plant 2 8000 0 1 7
Exhausts @ plant 2 1000 0 1 1

Shadow prices Slack Allowable Allowable

(relaxing the constraint) increase decrease
capacity plant 1 -2 1000 1000
capacity plant 2 0 1000 ∞ 1000
demand flaps -7 1000 1000
Demand slats -7 1000 8000
Demand exhausts -10 1000 1000