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the local supermarket buys lettuce each day to ensure really fresh produce. Each

ID: 3197987 • Letter: T

Question

the local supermarket buys lettuce each day to ensure really fresh produce. Each morning any lettuce that is left from the previous day is sold to a dealer that resells it to farmers who use it to feed their animals. This week the supermarket can buy fresh lettuce for $4 a box. Each box contains 10 heads of lettuce. The lettuce is sold for $1 a head and the dealer that sells old lettuce is willing to pay $0.20 per head. Past history says that tomorrow’s demand for lettuce averages 2500 heads with a standard deviation of 750 heads. How many boxes should the supermarket purchase tomorrow? (A fractional answer is okay).

Explanation / Answer

We have

Co = 4.00 ? 1.50 = 2.50

and

Cu = 10.00 ? 4.00 = 6.00.

the newsvendor fractile is p = Cu/(Cu + Co) = 70.59%,

and the corresponding z value is z = 0.54.

Then, the optimal quantity is Q = 250 + 34 ·z = 268.4.