The BridgePort Company has three plants producing white boards that are to be shipped to four distribution centers. Plants 1, 2, and 3 produce 12, 17, and 11 shipments per month, respectively. Each distribution center needs to receive 10 shipments per month. The distance from each plant to the respective distributing centers is given to the right
The freight cost for each shipment is $80 plus 50 cents per mile. How much should be shipped from each plant to each of the distribution centers to minimize the total shipping cost?
(a) Formulate this problem as a transportation problem by constructing the appropriate parameter table.
(b) Obtain an optimal solution.