Your goal is to optimize your profit. Over a 10 week period the demands for your product are 85, 97, 120, 105, 84, 74, 116, 123, 104, 98. The item sells for 50 dollars. There is a 500 dollar shipping charge on each order and if you order 150 or fewer items, each item costs 30. If you order between 150 and 249, each item costs 27 dollars. If you order 250 or more items, then the cost is 24 dollars per item. Each item in inventory costs 5 dollars due to storage space, capital spent, etc. Each item with a shortage (demand exceeds inventory) costs 15 dollars due to a loss of customer satisfaction, these items are never sold. What is your ordering policy?

ormaybesaladqh

ormaybesaladqh

Answered question

2022-10-29

Modeling Question: What to make my decision variables
I was given the following problem, and I am having trouble determining what to make my decision variables to model it:
Your goal is to optimize your profit. Over a 10 week period the demands for your product are 85, 97, 120, 105, 84, 74, 116, 123, 104, 98. The item sells for 50 dollars. There is a 500 dollar shipping charge on each order and if you order 150 or fewer items, each item costs 30. If you order between 150 and 249, each item costs 27 dollars. If you order 250 or more items, then the cost is 24 dollars per item. Each item in inventory costs 5 dollars due to storage space, capital spent, etc. Each item with a shortage (demand exceeds inventory) costs 15 dollars due to a loss of customer satisfaction, these items are never sold. What is your ordering policy?
I've tried calling x i j the number of products bought in week i at quantity j, where i goes from 1 to 10 and j goes from 1 to 3. Then I need a binary decision variable. I said let b i j = 1 if x i j > 0 and 0 if it is 0. I have issues modeling the inventory and shortage costs, then. There has to be a better way to define my decision variables.

Answer & Explanation

Travis Sellers

Travis Sellers

Beginner2022-10-30Added 18 answers

Step 1
First of all the quantity index is not needed here. If the solution is x 1 = 90 then it means that in the first week 90 units of the poduct are ordered. But you need an index (i) for the intervals.
x i j = { 1 ,   if the order of the produkt is in interval i in the week j 0 ,   elsewhere
Now the binary variable.
First interval
b 1 j = { 1 ,   if the order of product is lower or equal than 150 in week j  0 ,   elsewhere
Second interval
b 2 j = { 1 ,   if the order of product is greater than 150 and lower or equal than 249 in week j  0 ,   elsewhere
Third interval
b 3 j = { 1 ,   if the order of product is greater or equal than 250 in week j  0 ,   elsewhere
Step 2
The sum has to be one in every week:
i = 1 3 b i j = 1   j = 1 , 2 , . . . , 10
And the condstraints are
First interval
x 1 j b 1 j 150   j = 1 , 2 , . . . , 10
Second interval
x 2 j b 2 j 151   j = 1 , 2 , . . . , 10
x 2 j b 2 j 249   j = 1 , 2 , . . . , 10
Third interval
x 3 j b 3 j 250   j = 1 , 2 , . . . , 10
Let say b 1 j = x 3 j = 0 then x 1 j and x 3 j must be 0. And it follows as well that b 2 j = 1 and 151 x 2 j 249
Many roads lead to Rome. My model is one of it. I hope it is comprehensible. If you have any remarks or question feel free to comment.

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