INTRODUCTION

Starting this year manufacturer C, located in the Netherlands has started with the production of
product X. Product X is a new hardware product that will be introduced into different markets around
the world. All of these markets have placed orders for product X. The product has been developed by
company Y and they are now looking at possibilities to distribute their product to their customers
located within the given markets. Because company Y is a startup company they do not have any
knowledge or resources to operate a complex distribution networks. Their aim is to minimize on
transportation costs. To do this they have hired you (Give yourself a company name) to minimize their
transportation costs. They have provided you with a budget of 15 million US dollar which should
cover all the transport expenses. This value will be your companys revenue. The first requirement
from company Y is that the product must be shipped by air, due to their high density value. The
second requirement is that you develop a dashboard, with which company Y is able to add new
information to the existing data set, and change values accordingly.

PROBLEM

Company Y has provided you with information about the markets and their corresponding demand
(table 1).

Table 1: Market and demand

Market Demand*
United states 6100
EU 1260
China 8300
South America 4400
Africa 1000
India 7500
Russia 3800
Japan 1200
*product weight=10KG

Based on this information you have done some research to find airlines that have capacity to operate
within these markets, with the corresponding information about the available fleet and available
payload per aircraft type (Table 2)

Table 2: Airline, aircraft and payload capacity

Airline/aircraft Heavy aircraft (H) Medium aircraft (M) Payload H Payload M

information (x10.000) (x10.000)
American Airlines 4 0 0,725 0
British Airways 5 10 0,852 0,284
KLM 7 15 0,7026 0,2186
Lufthansa 9 20 0,6355 0,234
China Southern 5 0 0,5143 0
Emirates 6 0 0,65 0
Qatar 8 0 0,525 0
Continental 10 0 0,56 0
CargoLux 4 0 1,075 0
The airlines have published the following information about the costs per market. These costs are in
Euros and are charged per kg (table 3).

Table 3: Cost provided by the airline.

United South
Airline/market States EU China America Africa India Russia Japan
American
Airlines 2,51 8,37 9,52 6,31 14,44 25,68 9,76 11,11
British Airways 3,16 1,63 4,69 8,42 11,25 3,81 1,80 5,94
KLM 2,70 1,15 4,09 8,72 9,89 3,15 1,62 5,82
Lufthansa 2,90 1,16 3,99 9,40 11,32 2,94 1,74 5,66
China Southern 9,41 15,80 3,18 11,20 14,90 8,22 8,95 4,82
Emirates 7,13 3,60 3,99 9,05 9,25 2,86 2,18 4,84
Qatar 7,19 3,54 4,05 8,99 9,25 2,84 2,05 4,90
Continental 2,43 8,50 9,10 6,44 14,30 22,80 9,50 5,10
CargoLux 2,79 2,60 4,59 5,30 12,20 2,40 1,99 4,66

REQUIREMENTS:

1) Maximize the profit (In Euros) for your consultancy company by using MS Excel solver. The
following hints will be provided
a) Profit = revenue costs
b) Standardize the units of measurement
2) You will need to show a mathematical formulation of the LP problem in your report, including:
Variables, objective function and constraints. The following hints will be provided:
a) This is a practical case
b) Read the introduction and problem formulation! (take your time to understand the problem)
3) All values should be rounded up to 1 decimal!

4) Build a dashboard in MS Excel VBA, which should meet the following conditions.

For this part of the assignment you will need to show that your dashboard works. Therefore
company Y requests you to test it by adding a potential new market. Besides the new market a
new airline will be introduced to the network the following information has been provided:

The new market is Brazil and the new airline is Air France. The folloing information has been
provided

United South
Airline/market States EU China America Africa India Russia Japan Brazil
Air France 2,51 8,37 9,52 6,31 14,44 25,68 9,76 11,11 8,32

All the other airlines will have a cost of 12.50

 If you decide to not use VBA and use formulas or commands of Excel you will only receive 50%
of the grade you will get for the VBA part!

Requirements of the VBA exercise are stated as followed:

a) The user should be able to add new data lines (examples (new airlines, new markets, new
costs)
b) The user should be able to change data: such as cost, airline information (including fleet and
payload information), market information (including demand)
The following hints will be provided
i) Use Userform(s) (which are basic in VBA)
ii) Try to build the VBA part of the assignment parallel to that of the solver part

Additional hints:

1) Use the provided report format

2) Be consistent
3) Dont conclude anything that is not there.
4) Make sure you do the right conversions when doing the LP calculations

GRADING

70% of the grade will be the LP part, 30% of the assignment will be the VBA part of the exercise.

DEADLINE

The deadline will bet he 25th of june!