Can not determine if this is a linear programming problem, or a combinatorial optimization problem, or even a packing problem?
Goal is to allocate widgets from the inventory to fulfill all shipping orders.
Where inventory is a list of different widgets that each have a price (\$w), widget type (A,B,C,D) and consumer rating (0-100).
Where each shipping order must have a total value (\$m), and requires a certain percentage of some widgets with a specific type and minimum consumer rating.
Furthermore, if too few widgets are available in the inventory to fulfill all shipping orders, each widget type can be bought from a competitor at an inflated price of k*w (\$).
If this is a linear programming problem, I am not sure how to setup the problem to output a set of matches since all linear optimization problems I have previously worked with optimize a single objective value. Also not sure how to setup the objective function.