New England Feed

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

New England Feed Supply is a company which has twelve plants located throughout the New England region. They produce various different standard animal feed products. The feed products sold have a nutritional content that meets or exceeds the requirements set by the National Research Council. Companies such as the Burlington plant purchase these ingredients to produce their mixes, and must meet the same minimum nutritional content set by the NRC. Even though demand remains steady and predictable, occasional shortages could present problems for a company where such shortages are not acceptable.

Jeff Smith, formulation analyst, is to determine a combination of ingredients that satisfied the nutritional requirement set for each product. He must also ensure each product weight did not exceed one ton, since he is able to use non-nutritive filler at no cost to make up for the shortage. NEFS received an offer from the Burlington plant for 168 tons of meat meal. Due to a lack of inventory, Jeff Smith and NEFS have to decide whether to place a bid on the spot market for the extra meat meal, if so what amount, or to formulate a new mix taking the meat meal limitations into account.

In our analysis, our first step was to analyze the data collected from the Burlington Plant. We then used the ‘Solver’ tool to figure out the best mix for each product. We used an analysis to determine the most cost effective solution. The cost for ‘Pig Grower’ is $61,248, the ‘Pig Supplement’ cost is $35,894 and lastly the ‘Cage Layer’ has a cost of $96,562. After analyzing all possible solutions, the most cost effective and recommended method is the insert answer.

BACKGROUND

New England Feed Supply is an animal feed blending company comprised of twelve plants located throughout the New England region. They produce various different standard animal feed products. These feed products sold have a nutritional content that meets or exceeds the requirements set by...