After changing the quantity of products, my table looked like this:
Cutting total mins: 450
Knitting total mins: 480
Gentlemen prod. volum: 20
Ladies prod. volum: 35
Profits (Gentlemen): 1000
Profits (Ladies): 2625
Total profits: 3625
Capacity in mins. – Gentlemen: 480
Capacity in mins. – Ladies: 480
I worked with this data using Solver, I got this result:
Cutting total mins: 600
Knitting total mins: 480
Gentlemen prod. volum: 0
Ladies prod. volum: 60
Profits (Gentlemen): 0
Profits (Ladies): 4500
Total profits: 4500
Interpreting the results
After my changes, we can see that Solver has optimized production to offer only women’s hats. This may be because the selling price of women’s hats is higher than men’s hats. What can be observed from the result is that the cutting time exceeds the given capacity. If this change were to be introduced, the production capacity would have to be increased, for example invest in new equipment, machinery or hire more employees, analyse the workflow or optimizing pricing strategies to maximize revenue. I should point out that after using Solver the total profit increased from 3625 to 4500
My experience with linear programming
This task was not easy for me as I had never heard of the Solver extension in Excel. I must admit that I used Youtube to do the task through Solver. Following the video step by step was also quite difficult to do. Since the video I found for this was in English my Excel is set to Hungarian this caused double minor problems. My brain was fuming but finally I got a result which I was very happy about. The hardest part for Solver was the restrictions involved. It took me the longest time to figure out which data I should enter here. In many cases, no data came out or the Solver threw out the data You had entered in the Excel spreadsheet. Then I found out that you can also set the Equal, Greater or Less Than symbols when adding a constraint. I spent some time with these before I realised what they were useful for. Nevertheless, I’m glad to know that such an extension exists in Excel as I find it very interesting and useful. In the meantime, the thought occurred to me how many of these facilitating tools I don’t know about that would be of help. Hopefully I will use Solver in the future and I am comforted by the knowledge that I already know of its existence. It’s always a good thing when you learn something new that you didn’t know existed.