Harvest Hope Food Bank's Problem With Operating Budget Paper Example

What is the real world problem or situation being addressed?

The real problem that is facing Harvest Hope Food Bank is on how to utilize its operating budget, human and technical resources to increase food and dollar donations to individuals in 20 countries where it is providing services. The need to raise the amount donations aby HHFB requires strategies to be developed to make sure the individuals in these countries access food and relatively acceptable dollar amounts. The effort that HHFB should do is coming up with a financial plan that will be operated in an effective manner purposing to optimize the technical as well as the human methods or increasing food and dollar donations to the people in need of it in the 20 countries.

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How did the authors approach the problem? What modeling methodology or methodologies did they use?

In reference to the need for increasing the amount of dollar and food donations, the authors of the article developed an integer programming optimization model. They used the model in determining the optimal number of events that should characterize each initiative for every year. The authors made use of the integer programming model with the aim of maximizing on the total annual yields. In so doing, the authors subjected the model to various constraints and the allowed number of events of each initiative as defined management of HHFB.

Provide a summary description of each model they developed to address the problem

Summary of the model: Integer Programming Model

To build the model, data were collected. The approach applied in this case was by Identifying HHFB's planned and historical promotional initiatives and the expected dollar and food donations. In this way, the team was able to get insights on what to be included in the model or not. The development of the model was aimed at optimizing the mix of its operational initiatives to maximize dollar and food donations. In this way, its resource constraints will be raised accordingly.

The components of optimization using the integer programming model included optimizing of the promotional initiatives and meals-yield metric. Other components included in the integer programming included a definition of the constraints in connection to promotional initiatives. The other component that was considered was on the maximum and maximum allowable number of events for each of the promotional initiative.

What challenges or difficulties did the author face in their work on this problem?

One of the challenges that authors faced was on the need to determine the appropriate strategies that can be applied in the model for the optimization purposes. They were required to include a team of professionals to dig deep in the history of the operations of the organization to get knowledge of how they could have approached the problem to be solved by the identified model; integer programming.

What successes or benefits were achieved through their work?

The success arrived as some benefits were realized. The knowledge obtained in the exercise can be transferred to other food banks. The approach is a potential way to increase effectiveness in the operations on promotional strategies. At the end of it, all improvements are experienced.

What are your takeaways from this assignment? What did you learn might be of help in any future efforts to use course material on any next modeling project?

The lesson that is learned from the exercise is that there need to optimize the various process that requires resources of the Food Banks. Apart from the optimizing model raising the amounts of food and dollar donations, the managers of the organization have ample time in carrying out their duties and responsibilities.

Bibliography

Ahire, Sanjay L., and Pelin Pekgun. "Harvest Hope Food Bank Optimizes Its Promotional Strategy to Raise Donations Using Integer Programming." Interfaces 48, no. 4 (2018): 291-306.