There is a distributed car manufacturing organization, with 4 production sites located in:

• Pittsburgh
• Clinton
• Pocahontas
• Florissant

The models of cars produced (subdivide between luxury car and compact car) are 6:

• Car Frenchie luxury car
• Car Ago compact car
• Car Panettone compact car
• Car Edsil compact car
• Car Lupo luxury car
• Car Berto compact car

For the next year are expected 2 new models:

• Car Gabry luxury car
• Car Strega compact car

The car’s production is distributed as following:

The cars are produced with the following flow chart:

On the line frame the chassis is assembled with tires and engine.

The engine assembling is done only in the site of Florissant. The other production sites buy directly the engine already assembled.

The auto body is produced through the phases of stamping, welding and painting.

On the line box the auto body is assembled with console and seats.

There is a final assembling line for to put together the parts which exit from the line frame and from line box.

For to become simpler the exercise, each car model is composed by only 6 components (chassis, tires, engine, auto body, console, seats).

Some components are bought at the external of the factory (chassis, tires, engine (excluded the Florissant site), console, seats); instead the auto body is produced at the internal of the factory.

The components bought at the external of the factory, are subdivide in 3 categories:

• high quality A
• normal quality B
• economy quality C

To produce the auto body, is necessary to buy steel which can be of:

• high quality A
• normal quality B

The assembly of the engine is made only in the Florissant site, and all the pieces necessary are supplied directly by one factory.

Summarizing, in the system there are the following 13 components:

• Chassis_B
• Tires_A Tires_B
• Engine_A Engine_B
• Console_A Console_B Console_C
• Seats_A Seats_B
• Steel_A Steel_B
• Mix_A

The are 15 suppliers (from SUP_1 through SUP_15) of components situated in:

• Batesville: SUP_1
• Carlinville: SUP_2
• Emporia: SUP_3 SUP_4
• Jefferson City: SUP_5 SUP_6

• Jonesboro: SUP_7

• Joplin: SUP_8
• Muskogee: SUP_9
• Springfield: SUP_ 10 SUP_11
• St. Louis: SUP_12 SUP_13
• Topeka: SUP_14
• Tulsa: SUP_15

Each supplier produces the components as follow: