Burger Equipment produces 2 types of desks, standard and deluxe. Deluxe desks have oak tops and more-expensive hardware and require additional time for finishing and polishing. Standard desks require 80 board feet of pine and 10 hours of labor, whereas deluxe desks require 60 board feet of pine, 18 square feet of oak, and 16 hours of labor. For the next week, the company has 5,000 board feet of pine, 750 board feet of oak, and 400 hours of labor available. Standard desks net a profit $150, and deluxe desks net a profit of $320. All desks can be sold to national chains such as Staples.
a.) Identify the decision variables, objective function, and constraints in simple verbal statements.
b.) Mathematically formulate a linear optimization model.
Implement the linear optimization model that you developed for Burger Equipment in the previous problem in Excel and use Solver to find an optimal solution. Interpret the Solver Answer report and identify the binding constraints and verify the values of the slack variables by substituting the optimal solution into the model constraints.