Business Case Studies & Business Publications

Salmones Puyuhuapi: Production Planning

Pfeifer, Phillip E...

Case

Salmones Puyuhuapi: Production Planning

Pfeifer, Phillip E.; Echeverria, Rafael

QA-0753 | Published February 21, 2011 | 10 pages Case

Collection: Darden School of Business

Product Details

This case is appropriate for undergraduate, MBA, and MBAE audiences, but is specifically designed for Decision Analysis and Decision Analysis and Optimization, first-year MBA electives. It is related to but separable from "Salmones Puyuhuapi (A)" (UVA-QA-0749). That A case was about whether to harvest salmon early due to the threat of a virus, and it used a simple approximation for relating the value of a harvested salmon to its live weight. This production planning case addresses in detail how harvested salmon are processed and sold. Here, the plan Elisa Perez develops will determine how much value Salmones Puyuhuapi achieves from a day's harvest of salmon from one of the company's sites in southern Chile.

The case affords students the opportunity to develop a processing plan. For MBA students, that task will be accomplished using Excel’s Solver tool. In the analysis section, we present a Solver model that is linear and well suited to the task. The resulting optimal solution, however, is not without its shortcomings. Those shortcomings and how to respond to them can be addressed during class.