A manager receives a forecast for next year. Demand is projected to be 600 units for the first half of the year and 900 units for the second half. The monthly holding cost is $2 per unit, and it costs an estimated $55 to process an order.
A. Assuming that monthly demand will be level during each of the six-month periods covered by the forecast (e.g., 100 per month for each of the first six months), determine an order size that will minimize the sum of ordering and carrying costs for each of the six-month period.
B. Why is it important to be able to assume that demand will be level during each six-month period?
Note the EOQ assumption that "the demand rate is reasonably constant" does not necessarily require that the demand rate is constant across the entire year. In this problem we have a certain demand rate that will be fairly constant across the first six months of the year, and some (different) demand rate that will be fairly constant across the second six months of the year. In this case, you actually have two EOQ problems (1) solve for the order quantity that should be used during the first six months of the year, and (2) solve for the order quantity that should be used during the second six months of the year.