This is my first stab at linear programming. The instructor for my Ops/Stats class isn’t very responsive and I am a bit confused. Can any of your math whizzes help me out? Here is the question: The production editor for Zero Enterprises has 1800 pages of manuscript that might be copyedited. Because of the short time frame involved, only two copyeditors are available: John Smith and Mike Rogers. John has 10 days available and Sue has 12 days available. John can process 100 pages of manuscript per day and Mike can produce 150 pages of manuscript per day. Zero has developed an index used to measure the overall quality of a copyeditor from a scale of 1 (worst) to 10 (best). John’s quality rating is 9 and Mike’s is 6. In addition, John charges $3 per page of copyedited manuscript, and Sue charges $2 per page. If a budge of $4800 has been allocated for copyedited, how many pages should be assigned to each copyeditor in order to complete the project with the highest possible quality? Questions: What are the two variables? What are the constraints? How would you set up this problem?
Here is a start. First I assume when you refer to Sue you mean Mike. Variables: Xj = Days available for John; Xm = Days available for Mike Constraints: 3*Xj + 2*Xm <= 4800 Xj <= 10; Xm <= 12; Also need to establish non-negativity: Xj,Xm >=0 Problem to solve is: 100*Xj + 150*Xm = 1800 Use the rankings as factors.
QM for Windows chews up linear programming problems with finesse. It comes with one of the Quantitative Methods post grad books from Prentice Hall
