Basic Terminology: Transportation Problem
In this section, we augment your operational research vocabulary with some new terms related to transportation problem in linear programming.
Origin
It is the location from which shipments are dispatched.
Destination
It is the location to which shipments are transported.
Unit Transportation cost
It is the cost of transporting one unit of the consignment from an origin to a destination.
Perturbation Technique
It is a method used for modifying a degenerate transportation problem, so that the degeneracy can be resolved.
Feasible Solution
A solution that satisfies the row and column sum restrictions and also the non-negativity restrictions is a feasible solution.
Basic Feasible Solution
A feasible solution of (m X n) transportation problem is said to be basic feasible solution, when the total number of allocations is equal to (m + n – 1).
Optimal Solution
A feasible solution is said to be optimal solution when the total transportation cost will be the minimum cost.
In the sections that follow, we will concentrate on algorithms for finding solutions to transportation problems.
