Problem

A power company has just announced the August 1 opening of its second nuclear power-generation facility. The human resources department has been directed to determine how many nuclear technicians will need to be hired and trained over the remainder of the year. The plant currently employs 350 fully trained technicians and projects personnel needs as shown in the following table.

By law, a reactor employee can actually work no more than 130 hours per month (Slightly over 1 hour per day is used for check-in and check-out, record keeping, and daily radiation health scans.) Company policy at the power company also dictates that layoffs are not acceptable in months when the nuclear power plant is overstaffed. So, if more trained employees are available than are needed in any month, each worker is still fully paid, even though he or she is not required to work the 130 hours. Training new employees is an important and costly procedure. It takes one month of one-on-one classroom instruction before a new technician is permitted to work alone in the reactor facility. Therefore, trainees must be hired one month before they are actually needed. Each trainee teams up with a skilled nuclear technician and requires 90 hours of that employee's time, meaning that 90 hours less of the technician's time is available that month for actual reactor work.

Human resources department records indicate a turnover rate of trained technicians of 2% per month. In other words, 2% of the skilled technicians at the start of any month resign by the end of that month. A trained technician earns a monthly salary of $4,500, and trainees are paid $2,000 during their one month of instruction. Formulate this staffing problem by using LP and solve it by using Excel.