Minimize Cost for Clean Napkins: A Transportation Problem

What problem is being addressed in this scenario?

This is a minimum cost transportation problem that aims to minimize the cost of keeping a consistent supply of clean napkins.

The question revolves around the concept of a minimum cost transportation problem. This topic falls under the field of operations research and is often used in logistics and supply chain optimization. The key idea is to minimize costs while satisfying different kinds of constraints.

Part A: The given problem can be formulated as a minimum cost transportation problem with the number of napkins required each day as 'demand', the napkins available from purchasing or cleaning as 'supply', and the cost of each method as 'transportation cost'.

Part B: This problem would require a mixed integer programming solver, because we have an optimization problem involving both discrete and continuous variables, which is beyond the scope of an answer here. However, such a problem could be solved in Python using powerful libraries like Pulp or SciPy which allow for modeling and solving various optimization problems.