Minimization of Cost for an Instrumentation Production Line

A single oscilloscope production line manufactures four types of products on a continuous basis. The workers and equipment are able to manufacture any of the four products flexibly, and do so regularly. The demand for these four types of products is forecasted a year in advance. Given expected demand combined with known capacity of the line, minimizing the cost of production becomes a primary goal. As a project, this team extracted data from the company in which the production line operates and formulated a linear program. From the solution of this linear program the team suggested alternatives and generated a set of linear programs to match. Sensitivity analysis and obvious points of continued work are outlined for feedback to the company.