Optimization for Profit: A Decision Maker's Guide to Linear Programming

This major new volume provides business decisionmakers and analysts with a tool that provides a logical structure for understanding problems as well as a mathematical technique for solving them. The primary tool presented throughout Optimization for Profit is linear programming (LP)--a medium that can be mastered by any individual who seeks to improve his/her analytical and decisionmaking skills.

One of the special features of Optimization for Profit is the illustration of activity analysis as the technique used to formulate problems. By using activity analysis as the problem structure, linear programming become a natural extension of the way decision makers approach problems. As a result, linear programming becomes an integral part of the thinking process of the individual. Consequently, students or practitioners can readily create a linear programming model of an entire business or any part of a business. Several chapters are devoted to describing this technique and illustrating its application to many different types of companies, including an oil refinery, a marmalade production company, and a chicken processing plant. A thorough study of Optimization for Profit will enable you to work with any manufacturer or service industry and model all or part of the operation, and then solve the model to determine how best to minimize costs or maximize profits. Many firms save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year through the application of linear programming.

The authors have presented the material in this vital book so clearly and thoroughly that an individual could master the material through self-study. The inclusion of problems at the end of each chapter makes this book suitable as a textbook at the advanced undergraduate or beginning graduate level at most colleges or universities for students of management science, operations research personnel, and applied mathematicians working in industry, government, or academia.

Notable features of the book include:

• the practical aspects of modeling a business or any part of a business using linear programming
• a unique approach to explain the simplex method for solving linear programming problems
• real life, practical problems that are presented and solved in detail
• detailed instructions for those interested in solving linear programming problems on all types of computers from mainframes to PCs
• numerous problems provided for the benefit of the student and all of the linear programming models described in these problems as well as in the text itself are available on a diskette