TITLE:
An Efficient Approach for Transforming Unbalanced Transportation Problems into Balanced Problems in Order to Find Optimal Solutions
AUTHORS:
Abdur Rashid, Md. Amirul Islam
KEYWORDS:
Unbalanced Transportation Problem (UTP), Supply, Demand, Initial Solution, Optimal Solution
JOURNAL NAME:
American Journal of Operations Research,
Vol.14 No.1,
January
30,
2024
ABSTRACT: In operations research, the transportation problem (TP) is among the
earliest and most effective applications of the linear programming problem.
Unbalanced transportation problems reflect the reality of supply chain and
logistics situations where the available supply of goods may not precisely
match the demand at different locations. To deal with an unbalanced
transportation problem (UTP), it is essential first to convert it into a balanced transportation
problem (BTP) to find an initial basic feasible solution (IBFS) and hence the
optimal solution. The present paper is concerned with introducing a new
approach to convert an unbalanced transportation problem into a balanced one
and as a consequence to obtain optimum total transportation cost. Numerical
examples are provided to demonstrate the suggested method.