Yankee Hats has four distribution centers located in Atlanta, Lexington, Milwaukee and Salt Lake City and ships to three retail stores in Orlando, Philadelphia and Las Vegas. The accounting, production and marketing departments have provided the following information in the given tables; Plant capacities over the next planning period, retail store demand and unit cost of shipping between any distribution center and retail store. 

Dist. Center	Supply
Atlanta	2500
Lexington	1000
Milwaukee	2500
Salt Lake City	1500

 

Retail Stores	Demand
Orlando	4000
Philadelphia	1500
Las Vegas	2000

 

Transportation Cost	Orlando	Philadelphia	Las Vegas
Atlanta	$0.15	$0.50	$1.75
Lexington	$0.50	$0.30	$1.70
Milwaukee	$0.70	$0.40	$1.50
Salt Lake City	$1.60	$1.70	$0.35

The company would like to minimize the cost of their transportation network by identifying how units to ship between distribution center and retail store,

a. Formulate this linear optimization problem by clearly listing the decision variables, objective function and constraints.

b. Create a spreadsheet model for this problem and solve it using Solver. What is the minimum cost?

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