Planning

A trading company in the middle ages transported tea, spices, and other oriental products via the overland trade route between the middle east and China. In order to get all good transported from China to the middle east, dromedaries (which have one hump), camels (which have two humps), or some combination of the two could be used.

NOTE: You are not expected to solve this problem mathematically.

Answer the following questions:

• What would be the nature of the objective function in such an environment?
• What types of constraints would exist on the number of camels and number of dromedaries?
• Would it make any sense in this type of environment to have a negative number of camels (in other words, is such a thing realistic)? Why or why not?
• Describe a company that faces a similar transportation issue in modern times (obviously not using camels and dromedaries), and cite the source from which you learned about the company's need for such an analysis.