Determination of Initial Basic Feasible Solution for Transportation Problems by: “Supply–Demand Reparation Method” and “Continuous Allocation Method”

Abstract

Transportation problems are special classes of linear programming problems which constitute major part of logistics management. Two new divergent approaches to find initial basic feasible solution for transportation problem (TP) are presented in this paper. The first method supply–demand reparation method (SDRM) uses the supply and demand entities for a problem as the key to find the allocations, rather than the generic transportation cost matrix. The logic of bridging the supply–demand parameters is the driving principle of this method. The second method “continuous allocation method (CAM)” is sequential approach to solve transportation problems which is presented in this paper. The method relies on meeting the supply and demand requirements via a sequential allocation of quantities in the transportation matrix. The logic used is of satisfying each entity in the TP one after another. The proposed methods are used to solve numerous classes of problems and are compared with classical existing approach Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM). Further, “ANOVA” test reveals that both the methods SDRM and CAM are efficient in finding initial basic feasible solution (IBFS).