TITLE:
A Dual-Spread Opportunity VAM for Transportation Problems under Deterministic Cost Environments
AUTHORS:
Farhana Rashid, Rabindra Nath Mondal
KEYWORDS:
Transportation Problem, Optimization, Dual-Spread Opportunity VAM
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Optimization,
Vol.15 No.2,
June
10,
2026
ABSTRACT: Transportation challenges often occur in logistics and supply chain management, necessitating the movement of commodities from several sources to different destinations while minimizing transportation expenses. This paper proposes a Dual-Spread Opportunity VAM (DSO-VAM) for obtaining high-quality initial basic feasible solutions to transportation problems. The method is motivated by a revised VAM framework that improves classical penalty-based allocation by modifying row and column penalties. To address some limitations of existing methods, the proposed method combines dual-spread row and column penalties with an opportunity-based decision score that measures the future regret of postponing a low-cost allocation. A fixed weighting mechanism is introduced so that the relative influence of cost spread and allocation pressure changes dynamically throughout the solution process. Numerical examples show that DSO-VAM matches or improves upon the solutions obtained by NWCM, MCM, VAM, and the Revised-VAM. The proposed framework preserves computational simplicity while providing a more flexible and globally informed allocation rule for transportation optimization.