The Pine Furniture Company makes fine country furniture. The company’s current product lines consist of end tables, coffee tables, and dining room tables. The production of each of these tables requires 8, 15, and 80 pounds of pine wood, respectively. The tables are handmade, and require one hour, two hours, and four hours, respectively. Each table sold generates $50, $100, and $220 profit, respectively. The company has 3,000 pounds of pine wood and 200 hours of labor available for the coming week’s production. The chief operating officer (COO) has asked you to do some spreadsheet modeling with these data to analyze what the product mix should be for the coming week and make a recommendation.
(a) Visualize where you want to finish. What numbers will the COO need? What are the decisions that need to be made? What should the objective be?
(b) Suppose that Pine Furniture were to produce three end tables and three dining room tables. Calculate by hand the amount of pine wood and labor that would be required, as well as the profit generated from sales.
(c) Make a rough sketch of a spreadsheet model, with blocks laid out for the data cells, changing cells, output cells, and objective cell.
(d) Build a spreadsheet model and then solve it.