Question: Far North outfitters is a retail phone catalog firm that specializes in outdoor clothing and equip. A phone station will be staffed with either full time operators or temp operators 8 hours per day. Full time employees process more orders and make fewer mistakes than temp workers. Temp operators are cheaper because of lower wage rate and are not paid benefits. A full time operator can process about 360 orders a week; temps can process about 270 orders per week. A full time operator will average 1.1 defective orders per week, and temps incur 2.7 defective orders a week. The company wants to limit defective orders to 200 per week. The cost of staffing a station with full timers is $610 per week and $450 a week for temps. Using historical data and forecasting methods, the company has developed estimates of phone orders for an 8 week period:

Weeks Orders

1 19,500

2 21,000

3 25,600

4 27,200

5 33,400

6 29,800

7 27,000

8 31,000

The firm doesn’t want to hire full time workers after the first week (the company wants a constant group of full time operators over the 8 week period) The company wants to determine how many operators it needs and how many temp operators to hire each week in order to meet weekly demand while minimizing labor costs.

a. Formulate only