Manufacturing parts analysis.
Consider you’re working as a manufacturing company, and you have a blueprint for some item you wish to sell. This item can be built by combining a set of parts, of which you have a finite amount.
Now, assume you have a set of items and their blueprints, all using a varying -and overlapping- subset of parts from your parts list.
Treat the parts list as a set of atomic items and you have a variable amount of each item. These items also have a cost associated with them:
| part | amount | price |
|---|---|---|
| a | 10 | 5.99 |
| b | 5 | 9.99 |
| c | 50 | 2.99 |
| . | ||
| . | ||
| . | ||
| n |
Consider the blueprint as a compound tuple of the items in use:
| item | component 1 | component 2 | parts_price | sales_price |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| X | 1(b) | 5(c) | 24.94 | 35.00 |
| Y | 2(a) | 3(c) | 20.95 | 30.00 |
| Z | 5(b) | 2(a) | 61.93 | 75.00 |
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How would you determine the optimal set of items to sell to maximize profits?
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Consider the case where selling the parts straight would be more profitable than selling the manufactured items