CASES CASE 4.1 Fabrics and Fall Fashions From the tenth floor of her office building, Katherine Rally watches the swarms of New Yorkers fight their way through the streets infested with yellow cabs and the sidewalks lit- tered with hot dog stands. On this sweltering July day, she pays particular attention to the fashions worn by the various women and wonders what they will choose to wear in the fall. Her thoughts are not simply random musings; they are critical to her work since she owns and manages TrendLines, an elite women's clothing company. Today is an especially important day because she must meet with Ted Lawson, the production manager, to decide upon next month's production plan for the fall line. Specif- ically, she must determine the quantity of each clothing item she should produce given the plant's production ca- pacity, limited resources, and demand forecasts. Accurate planning for next month's production is critical to fall sales since the items produced next month will appear in stores during September, and women generally buy the majority of the fall fashions when they first appear in September. She turns back to her sprawling glass desk and looks at clothing patterns designed almost six months ago, the lists the numerous papers covering it. Her eyes roam across the of materials requirements for each pattern, and the lists of demand forecasts for each pattern determined by customer surveys at fashion shows. She remembers the hectic and sometimes nightmarish days of designing the fall line and presenting it at fashion shows in New York, Milan, and Paris. $860,000 for their work on her fall line. With the cost of hir- Ultimately, she paid her team of six designers a total of ing runway models, hair stylists, and makeup artists, sewing and fitting clothes, building the set, choreographing and re- hearsing the show, and renting the conference hall, each of the three fashion shows cost her an additional $2,700,000. She studies the clothing patterns and material require- ments. Her fall line consists of both professional and casual fashions. She determined the prices for each clothing item by taking into account the quality and cost of material, the cost of labor and machining, the demand for the item, and the prestige of the TrendLines brand name. The fall professional fashions include: Clothing Item Materials Requirements Price Labor and Machine Cost Tailored wool slacks 3 yards of wool $300 $160 2 yards of acetate for lining Cashmere sweater 1.5 yards of cashmere $450 $150 Silk blouse Silk camisole Tailored skirt Wool blazer 1.5 yards of silk $180 $100 0.5 yard of silk $120 $ 60 2 yards of rayon $270 $120 1.5 yards of acetate for lining 2.5 yards of wool $320 $140 1.5 yards of acetate for lining The fall casual fashions include: CASES Labor and Clothing Item Materials Requirements Price Machine Cost Velvet pants 3 yards of velvet $350 $175 2 yards of acetate for lining Cotton sweater 1.5 yards of cotton $130 5.60 Cotton miniskirt Velvet shirt Button-down blouse 1.5 yards of rayon 0.5 yard of cotton $75 $ 40 1.5 yards of velvet $200 $120 $160 $90 161 She knows that for the next month, she has ordered 45,000 yards of wool, 28,000 yards of acetate, 9,000 yards of cashmere, 18,000 yards of silk, 30,000 yards of rayon, 20,000 yards of velvet, and 30,000 yards of cotton for pro- duction. The prices of the materials are as follows: Material Price per yard $9.00 $ 1.50 $60.00 $13.00 $2.25 $12.00 $ 2.50 Wool Acetate Cashmere Silk Rayon Velvet Cotton Any material that is not used in production can be sent back to the textile wholesaler for a full refund, although scrap ma- terial cannot be sent back to the wholesaler. She knows that the production of both the silk blouse and cotton sweater leaves leftover scraps of material. Specif- ically, for the production of one silk blouse or one cotton sweater, 2 yards of silk and cotton, respectively, are needed. From these 2 yards, 1.5 yards are used for the silk blouse or the cotton sweater and 0.5 yard is left as scrap material. She does not want to waste the material, so she plans to use the rectangular scrap of silk or cotton to produce a silk camisole or cotton miniskirt, respectively. Therefore, when- ever a silk blouse is produced, a silk camisole is also pro- shirts. TrendLines does not want to produce more than the forecasted demand because once the pants and shirts go out of style, the company cannot sell them. TrendLines can pro- duce less than the forecasted demand, however, since the company is not required to meet the demand. The cashmere sweater also has limited demand because it is quite expen- sive, and Trendlines knows it can sell at most 4,000 cash- mere sweaters. The silk blouses and camisoles have limited demand because many women think silk is too hard to care for, and Trendlines projects that it can sell at most 12,000 silk blouses and 15,000 silk camisoles. The demand forecasts also indicate that the wool slacks, tailored skirts, and wool blazers have a great demand because they are basic items needed in every professional wardrobe. Specifically, the demand for wool slacks is 7,000 pairs of slacks, and the demand for wool blazers is 5,000 blazers. Katherine wants to meet at least 60 percent of the demand for these two items in order to maintain her loyal customer base and not lose business in the future. Although the demand for tailored skirts could not be estimated. Katherine feels she should make at least 2.800 of them. (a) Ted is trying to convince Katherine not to produce any velvet shirts since the demand for this fashion fad is quite low. He argues that this fashion fad alone accounts for $500,000 of the fixed design and other costs. The net contribution (price of clothing item- materials cost- labor cost) from selling the fashion fad should cover these fixed costs. Each velvet shirt generates a net contribution of $22. He argues that given the net contribution, even satisfying the maximum demand will not vield a profit. What do you think of Ted's argument? 162 CHAPTER 4 SOLVING LINEAR PROGRAMMING PROBLEMS: THE SIMPLEX METHOD demand for velvet will decrease in the future. Katherine can therefore get no refund for the velvet. How does this fact change the production plan? (d) What is an intuitive economic explanation for the difference be tween the solutions found in parts (b) and (c)? (e) The sewing staff encounters difficulties sewing the arms and lining into the wool blazers since the blazer pattern has an awk- ward shape and the heavy wool material is difficult to cut and sew. The increased labor time to sew a wool blazer increases the labor and machine cost for each blazer by $80. Given this new cost, how many of each clothing item should Trendlines produce to maximize profit? (f) The textile wholesaler informs Katherine that since another tex- tile customer canceled his order, she can obtain an extra 10,000 yards of acetate. How many of each clothing item should Trend- Lines now produce to maximize profit? (g) TrendLines assumes that it can sell every item that was not sold during September and October in a big sale in November at 60 percent of the original price. Therefore, it can sell all items in unlimited quantity during the November sale. (The previously mentioned upper limits on demand concern only the sales dur- ing September and October.) What should the new production plan be to maximize profit?