Introduction to Management Science 12th Edition by Bernard Taylor

Exercise 78

Suntrek, based in China, is a global supplier of denim jeans for apparel companies around the world. They purchase raw cotton from producers in Arkansas, Mississippi, and Texas, where it is picked, ginned, and baled and then transported by flatbed trucks to ports in Houston, New Orleans, Savannah, and Charleston, where it is loaded into 80-foot containers and shipped to factories overseas. For the coming year Suntrek has contracted with its U.S. broker for 71,000 (550 lb.) bales of cotton and the transportation and handling costs from each cotton-processing facility to each port, and the container capacity (in bales) at each port are as follows:
Determine the optimal shipments from each processing facility to each port that will result in the minimum shipping cost.