Page 120 - DCOM303_DMGT504_OPERATION_RESEARCH

Unit 5: Transportation Problem

Notes
Cochin Nellore Salem Madurai
Chennai 0 1 2 9
Coimbatore 3 0 0 2
Bangalore 2 3 2 0

The general manager of SISOL called meeting of the executives at the central office. Some
executives proposed that all orders should be routed through the central office which
would determine the optimal programme. Others protested that this would seriously
conflict with the firm's philosophy of decentralization.
Question:

You have been hired as a consultant by the general manager. Prepare a minimum cost
distribution schedule for SISOL. Compare this schedule with the present schedule of 2005;
which is better?

5.9 Summary

 A transportation problem basically deals with that problem which aims to find the best
way to fulfill the demand of various demand sources using the capacities of various
supply points.

 Although the formation can be used to represent more general assignment and scheduling
problems as well as transportation and distribution problems, it gets its name from its
application to problems involving transporting products from several sources to several
destinations.
 The two common objectives of such problems are either to minimize the cost of shipping
commodity to various destinations or to maximize the profit of shipping it various
destinations.

 Transportation problems are often used in, surprise, transportation planning. But it should
always be remembered that the transportation problem is only a special topic of the linear
programming problems.

5.10 Keywords

Balanced Transportation Problem: when the total supplies of all the sources are equal to the
total demand of all destinations.
Basic Feasible Solution: A feasible solution to an 'm' origin and 'n; destination is said to be basic,
if the number of positive allocations are (m+n+1).
Degeneracy: When the number of filled cells is less than the number of rows plus the number of
columns minus one.

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