Study of Unbalanced Transshipment Problems Using the Least Cost - Stepping Stone Method and the Least Cost - Modi Method

Abstract

Transshipment problem is the development of the transportation problem where to send a commodity from a source to a destination cannot be done directly but through an agent or a transit first. Same as the transportation problem, the purpose of solving the transhipment problem is getting distribution costs to a minimum. This study discusses resolves the issue of transshipment with the unbalanced condition which amount of supply is not equal to the amount of demand, the method that used to solve this problem is the Least Cost method to search the initial solution and the Stepping Stone method for optimal completion. Least Cost - MODI method was also used to compare the optimization test which one is better for use in solving the problem of transshipment. Results from the study concludes that the Least Cost - Stepping Stone method and Least Cost - MODI method can solve the problem of transshipment is not balanced, but according to the turns ratio test MODI method is more efficient than the method used in the Stepping Stone to test the optimality of a transshipment problem. The surplus of MODI method is the number of iterations are fewer and repair searchable index without having to find a loop of each cell is empty, it only takes one loop obtained after determining the cell with the largest improvement index.