Annals of An Alternative Method to Find Initial Basic Feasible Solution of a Transportation Problem

Abstract. The paper solved the transportation problem with Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM) is a special class of Linear Programming Problem. The importance of determining efficient solutions for large sized transportation problems is borne out by many practical problems in industries, the military, etc. With this motivation, a few variants of VAM incorporating the total opportunity cost (TOC) concept were investigated to obtain fast and efficient solutions. Computational experiments were carried out to evaluate these variants of VAM. The quality of solutions indicates that the basic version of the VAM coupled with total opportunity cost (called the VAM-TOC) yields a very efficient initial solution. Researchers determined the amounts transported from each source to each sink. Also researchers discussed how to satisfying the supply and demand restrictions, minimize the total transportation cost