Transportation Problem

A Presentation
By
Prof. Manidatta Ray

Commodities are transported while people travel

What is Transportation Problem ?

The Transportation Problem (TP) is a special
type of linear programming problem where the
objective is to minimize transportation cost i.e. , the
cost of distributing a product from a number of
sources or origins to a number of destinations .
In other words , TP is to transport various
amount of a single homogenous commodity , that
are initially stored at various origins , to different
destinations in such a way that the total
transportation cost is a minimum .

Example
Lets consider a manufacturer who operates 3
factories and dispatches his products to 5 different
retail outlets .
The table-1 indicates the capacities of the 3
factories , the quantity of products required at
various retail outlets and the cost of shipping one
unit of the product from each of 3 factories to each
of the 5 retail shops :

Transportation Table :

Retail Shops
Factories

Capacity
1

13

36

51

50

24

12

16

20

100

14

33

23

26

150

Requirements

100

70

50

40

40

300

Terminologies :
The Origin of a transportation problem is the location

from which shipments are dispatched .

The Destination of a transportation problem is the
location to which shipments are transported.
The table which provides the basic data regarding the
transportation problem is known as Transportation
table .
The quantities inside the colored rectangle are known as
Unit Transportation Cost (UTC). It is the cost of
transporting one unit of the consignment from an origin to
a destination .
A transportation problem is said to be unbalanced TP if
the total availability at the origin is different from the total
requirement at the destination .

Notations used in Transportation Problems

:
A transportation problem can be formulated as a LPP
using variables with two subscripts .
For example ,
X11 = Amount to be transported from factory-1 to retail
shop-1 .
C11 = Unit transportation cost from factory-1 to retail
shop-1 .
Let the capacities of three factories be denoted by :
a1=50 , a2=100 , a3=150 .
The requirement of the retail shop are : b1=100 ,
b2=70 , b3=50 , b4=40 , b5=40 .

Then the Transportation problem can be

formulated as :
Minimize Z = C11X11+C12X12++C35X35 .

Subject to Constraints:
X11+X12+X13+X14+X15=a1.
X21+X22+X23+X24+X25=a2.
X31+X32+X33+X34+X35=a3.
x11+x21+x31=b1.
x12+x22+x32=b2.
x13+x23+x33=b3.
x14+x24+x34=b4.
x15+x25+x35=b5.
and
x11>=0, x12>=0,,x35>=0 .

The Variable Xij indicates

the amount to be transported
From the i th origin to j th destination

This problem has 8 constraints and 15 variables .

Techniques for Solving TP

A no. of techniques are available for computing

an initial basic feasible solution of a
transportation problem :
North West Corner Rule .
Matrix Minimum Method/Least Cost Method .
Vogels Approximation Method .
But the optimum solution of a TP can be
obtained from :
Modified Distribution Method (MODI Method) .
Stepping Stone Method .

Thank You