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ELSEVIER European Journal of Operational Research 97 (1997) 571-579

Theory and Methodology

A branch and bound algorithm for the traveling purchaser

problem
Kashi N. Singh a, *, Dirk L. van Oudheusden b
a Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bihar College of Engineering, Patna 800 005, India
b Division of Industrial Management, Catholic University ofLouvain, B 3001 Leuven, Belgium

Abstract

An important generalization of the traveling salesman problem called the traveling purchaser problem is considered. A
branch and bound algorithm which solves a related simple plant location problem for calculating the bounds is proposed for
this problem. Computational experiments with this algorithm provide the evidence that moderate size problems of upto 25
cities and 100 commodities can be solved in reasonable computation time. The problem is shown to have applications in the
areas of scheduling, warehousing and routing. © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.

Keywords: Traveling purchaser problem; Traveling salesman problem; Simple plant location problem; Heuristic; Algorithm

1. Introduction price. Also, we assume that triangular inequality

W e consider a problem in which a set 1 =
{1, 2 . . . . . m} of m cities and a set J = {1, 2 . . . . . n}
of n commodities are given. Also, we are given c u,
the cost of commodity j at city i, and hi~, the cost
of travel from city i to city k. A purchaser starts
from his home city (say city 1), travels to a subset of
m cities and purchases each of the n commodities,
and finally returns to his home city. The problem is
to find a tour for the purchaser such that the sum of
the travel and purchase costs is minimized.
To avoid explicit consideration of trivial cases,
we assume that each commodity is available in at
least one of the m cities, and that none of the cities
can provide each o f n commodities at the cheapest
* Corresponding author. Present address: National Institute of
Industrial Engineering (NITIE), Vihar Lake, Mumbai 400087,
India.
holds in travel costs.
The traveling purchaser problem (TPP) as de-
scribed above is NP-hard as one of its special cases
where m = n and each city carries only one com-
modity reduces to a traveling salesman problem
(TSP).
The name, traveling purchaser problem, was
coined by Ramesh (1981) who presented a lexico-
graphic search procedure to solve the problem ex-
actly. He could solve problems of only upto 12 cities
and 10 commodities. Prior to this Burstail (1966)
encountered a problem o f similar structure in a tube
manufacturing firm. He developed a heuristic which
was further commented on by Lomnicki (1966).
Buzacott and Dutta (1971) developed an exact proce-
dure based on dynamic programming for a job se-
quencing problem having similar structure.
Golden et al. (1981) developed a heuristic ap-
proach to solve the TPP. Their heuristic was, later

0377-2217/97/$17.00 © 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved

PII S0377-221 7(96)003 13-X
572 K.N. Singh, D.L. van Oudheusden/ European Journal of OperationalResearch 97 (1997) 571-579
on, modified by Ong (1982) but in the absence of
any powerful exact procedure it was not known how
good the solutions given by these heuristics would
be.
In the present paper a branch and bound algorithm
for the TPP is developed. The basic idea is that the
two aspects of the problem, viz., selection of a
subset of m cities for the tour and determination of
an optimal tour of these cities, are successfully em-
bedded into one. While for the resolution of the
former, similarity of the TPP with the simple plant
location problem (SPLP) is exploited, for the latter, a
branching rule similar to that of Little et al. (1963)
for the TSP is used. The algorithm is found to have
resolved comparatively large size problems (with 25
cities and 100 commodities) on an IBM 3031 com-
puter in a reasonable computation time.
2. M a t h e m a t i c a l formulation
The constituents of the problem are
m : the number of cities indexed by i, i ~ l =
{1 . . . . . m}.
n : the number of commodities indexed by j, j ~ J
= {1 . . . . . n}.
cij : cost of commodity j at city i.
hik : cost of travel from city i to city k, k ~ I.
Let us introduce the Boolean variable:
Xi~ equal to 1 if commodity j is purchased from city
i and equal to 0 otherwise.
Yik equal to 1 if city k immediately follows city i in
the optimal tour and equal to 0 otherwise.
Now the TPP can be represented as follows:
Minimize ~,~ ~ cijXij "[- ~
i=1 j = l i=1 k = l
m and whose bound is less than or equal to the lower
Subject to ~ Xij -~- 1 j = 1 . . . . . n
i=l
k~l
r,,! i = 1 . . . . . m;
m j =
k=l
X i j ~ {0, 1} i = 1 . . . . . m;
j- 1 . . . . .
Yik ~ { 0 , 1} i = 1 . . . . . m;
k = 1. . . . . m (5)
and cities finally selected must be
connected by a single tour (6)
The objective function (1) represents the sum of
commodity cost and travel cost. The constraints (2)
express that each commodity has to be purchased at
a single city. The constraints (3) ensure that only the
cities in the optimal tour are considered for purchas-
ing commodities. Constraints (4) provide that a com-
modity is either purchased at a given city or not.
Similarly, constraints (5) indicate that in an optimal
tour a city either immediately follows a given city or
not.
This is to be noted that the above problem, (1) to
(6), represents a more general formulation of the
TPP than that described in the beginning as none of
the cities (such as home city) is constrained to be in
the tour. It will be seen later that this can be ensured
without any extra difficulty.
3. A branch and bound algorithm
The TPP as formulated above is difficult to solve
by a direct approach. Hence, a branch and bound
algorithm is devised. The basic idea is to break up
the set of all possible tours into smaller and smaller
subsets and to calculate for each of them a lower
bound on the sum of the tour travel cost and the
commodity cost. The lower bound is calculated by
solving a relaxation of the problem which is similar
to an SPLP. The bounds guide the partitioning of the
~ hikYik (l) subsets and eventually identify an optimal solution
when a subset is found that contains a single tour
(2) bounds for all other subsets.
3.1 Lower bounds
1 ..... n (3) To calculate lower bounds some of the con-
straints, (2) to (6), are relaxed and the resulting
problems are solved. Let us define variables
n (4) Yi = ~ Y i k = ~ Y k i (7)
k=l k=l
 K.N. Singh, D.L. van Oudheusden/ EuropeanJournal of OperationalResearch 97 (1997)571-579 573

such that (7) ensure that in the optimal tour a city i / all "~
must have a single immediate predecessor city and a tours ]
single immediate successor city. Now constraints
(3)-(5) imply

Xij ~ Yi (8) [ i, k
\
and
/
{o, 1} (9) /

The Boolean variable, Yi, will be equal to 1 if city i (~/) t,p !

is included in the optimal tour and equal to zero
otherwise. Further, let us define
Fig. I. Branching of a tree.
fi = rain { hik } (10)
k

fi, here, represents the minimum cost to be incurred

for traveling out of city i. Then it is obvious that
i=1 k = l i=1
Hence, the right hand side of (11) will give a lower
bound on the total travel cost. Now the solution to
the following problem will give a lower bound on
the minimum objective function value of the TPP
represented by (1)-(6).
~ cijXij-~- ~ f i Y i
i=1 j = l i=1
Subject to (2), (4), (8) and (9)
The above problem has the same form as the
SPLP-model of Efroymson and Ray (1966) and can
be easily solved by any of the available approaches
(e.g., Bilde and Krarup, 1977; Erlenkotter, 1978). In
fact one of the special cases of TPP, wherein hik = C
(a constant), i ~ I, k ~ I, results in an SPLP.
3.2 Branching
The initial solution to the above problem consti-
tutes the root of the search tree. This is also called
the initial node of the tree and it represents the set of
all tours. The process of partitioning for this set of
all tours into disjoint subsets is represented as
branching of the tree and the subsets of tours as
nodes of the tree. The node containing i, k (see Fig.
1) represents all tours which include the city pair
(i, k), whereas the node containing i, k represents
all tours that do not include city pair (i, k). If a
further branching is done at the i, k node, the node
containing t, p represents all tours that include (i, k)
but not (t, p), whereas t, p represents all tours that
include both (i, k) and (t, p).
By tracing from a given node, P, back to start,
we can easily know which city pairs are committed
to appear in the tours of P and which are forbidden
(12) to appear. If the branching is carried further, some
node will eventually represent a single tour of com-
mitted city pairs. So the main decision involved at
each branching step is how to choose a city pair
(t, p) to base the branching on. In the proposed
algorithm, at each step the city pair (t, p) is chosen
in such a way that the problem with this pair ex-
cluded or t,(t(t(~) will yield as large a bound as
possible. This branching decision rule is similar to
that of Little et al. for the TSP.
When a node, P, branches into two further nodes,
the node with the newly committed city pair will be
called Q and the node with the newly forbidden city
pair C9.
3.3 Flow chart of the algorithm
Each individual step of the algorithm has been put
in a separate box in the flow chart (see Fig. 2) and
574 K.N. Singh, D.L. van Oudheusden / European Journal of Operational Research 97 (1997) 571-579

' 'START )

, Initialize
l
If = Travel Cost Matrix
C = Commodity Cost Matrix
P = 1 (all tours), 7,0 = ~

2 1
Calculate fi ~ min { hlk I-
Solve SPLP k
Label P by w(P) = Objective
function value of SPLP
Level = 1

Yes Yes Z0 = w (P)

!
Save T o u r
Solution is optimal

.~o
()
~3

[
Choose city-pair (t, p) for tree extension
such that node with this Pair excluded or Solution is I
( I ~ will yield as large a bound as Z0 = w (O)
optimal
possible. Save tour

5" 1
Make a branch from P t o ~ 7 the CP node.
ft = f't, the next higher cost. Solve SPLP.
10
Set up H for P :
No

1. H = OriginalTravel Cost Matrix

L a b e l ~ by w ( ( ~ - = objective function 2. Read pairs (i, k) committed to be in tours of P.
value of SPLP. Restore original value of ft. 3. For each such (i, k) delete row i and column k
of H. Prevent subtours if necessary. For each
t, p prohibited from tours of P, set htp = m.
4. Find values of fi.
5. Label this node byw (P) = w (O)~

1
Make a branch from P to Q, the t, p node.
Delete row t and column p in H. Make
necessary changes in fi values. Prevent
subtour of connected path if required.
Solve SPLP and label
Q by w (O) = Objective function value of
SPLP.
Level = Level + 1

()
Yes

Yes
No

F i g . 2. F l o w c h a r t o f t h e a l g o r i t h m .
 K.N. Singh, D.L. van Oudheusden / European Journal of Operational Research 97 (1997) 571-579 575

the step number is marked thereon. The working of Table 1

the algorithm is explained through an example prob- Computational results for problems with asymmetric travel costs.

lem given in the Appendix. Problem Problem size t~ S t2

In a nutshell the following are the main features No. m n
of the proposed branch and bound algorithm, l 10 30 0.137 0.105 -
a) At each node the lower bound is determined by 2 10 50 1.095 0.746 0.144
solving a related SPLP and the technique used is the 3 10 100 3.126 0.401 0.393
dual-based method of Erlenkotter (1978). The method 4 15 10 1.709 0.662 1.092
5 15 50 14.797 1.235 2.035
constructs optimal or near optimal solutions in 6 15 100 51.987 2.033 0.582
O(nm 2) instructions (additions, subtractions and 7 20 10 1.817 0.025 0.113
comparisons). Since we are interested only in good 8 20 30 18.537 6.695 6.815
bounds we do not solve SPLP to optimality at each 9 20 50 36.518 2.944 6.447
step and hence the branch and bound phase of this to 20 100 124.593 7.162 2.732
11 25 10 6.655 5.685 0.592
method is not used for solving SPLP. We could see, 12 25 30 63.636 17.345 22.199
however, that the dual-ascent phase itself produced 13 25 50 85.980 1.600 12.020
optimal solutions in most of the cases.
tt: mean computation time (sec) excluding 1 / 0 times to obtain an
b) For branching, a city pair is selected such that optimal solution.
the problem with this pair excluded will yield as t2: mean computation time (sec) to obtain the first feasible
large a bound as possible. solution.
c) Fathoming of a node is done either by bound- s: standard deviation of computation times.

ing i.e., when the bound exceeds the cost of the best
solution obtained so far or on getting a feasible
solution. For a detailed discussion of each aspect of
the algorithm the reader may refer to Singh (1985).
4. Computational results
A Computer program in FORTRAN, called TRA-
PUR, of the above algorithm is written and tested on
an IBM 3031 computer. Since standard test problems
are not available, most of the cost data are randomly
generated. As some of the applications of TPP can
be found in job sequencing on machines with se-
quence-dependent changeover costs and since
changeover costs need not be symmetric, we experi-
ment with asymmetric travel costs first. Later on, we
experiment with symmetric travel costs as well. The
results of these experiments are summarized in Table
1 and Table 2.
Asymmetric travel costs for problems of various
size are generated in the same manner as has been
done for a similar scheduling problem in Hansen and
van Oudheusden (1972). Travel costs are integers
randomly generated from a uniform distribution in
the range (15, 30). Commodity costs different from
arbitrary large value, M, are also integers generated
from a uniform distribution in the range (a, a + 10),
where a is an integer whose value does not influence
the optimal solution as all the commodities are to be
purchased. The proportion of commodity costs dif-
ferent from M is around 50%. A problem size is
specified by the number of cities, m, and the number
of commodities, n. A total of 65 problems (5 prob-
lems of each size) with asymmetric travel costs, and
of 10 to 25 cities and 10 to 100 commodities are
generated and solved. As the data on computation
times for any other approach are not available, nu-
merical comparison was not possible.
Table 1 presents the mean computation time (t~)
for each size of problem solved by TRAPUR. The
table also includes the standard deviation (s) of
computation times, and the mean CPU time Oz) for
obtaining the first feasible solution. The first feasible
solution values were always within 5% and in many
cases within 1% of the respective optimal solution
values. The results indicate that 10-city problems
with upto 100 commodities could be solved in a few
seconds. Similarly, problems with 15 to 25 cities and
10 commodities could be solved in small computa-
tion times. Computation times start increasing when
problems of size (15 × 50) or bigger are solved. For
problems with same number of commodities, addi-
tion of 5 cities increases the computation time by
576 K.N. Singh, D.L. van Oudheusden / European Journal of Operational Research 97 (1997) 571-579

Table 2
Computational results for problems with symmetric travel costs
Problem No Problem size t I (sec) t 2 (sec) Average relative Average relative
travel cost commodity cost
m n
TRAPUR/GS TRAPUR/GS

1 10 15 0.799 0.064 0.675 1.00

2 10 30 4.017 0.130 0.914 0.989
3 10 50 6.853 0.182 0.904 1.00
4 15 15 5.002 0.201 0.871 1.00
5 15 30 15.943 0.243 0.859 0.992
6 15 50 57.839 0.360 0.812 1.072
7 20 15 16.189 0.347 0.657 1.080
8 20 30 33.961 0.399 0.691 0.961
tl: mean computation time for TRAPUR (IBM 3031).
t2: mean computation time for GS (IBM 3031).

about 2 to 3 times, and for problems with same
number of cities, addition of 50 commodities in-
creases the computation time by about 3 to 4 times.
For generating symmetric problems, hik values
are taken from the travel cost data for the 33-city
TSP given in Karg and Thompson (1964). cij values
different from M are integers randomly generated
from a uniform distribution in the range (0-500). A
total of 40 problems with 10 to 20 cities and 15 to 50
commodities are solved. These problems are also
solved by a generalized savings (GS) heuristic devel-
oped by Golden et al. and the solutions given by the
GS heuristic are compared with the optimal solutions
obtained by TRAPUR. Table 2 provides the data on
mean computation time (t l) for TRAPUR, mean
computation time (t z) for the GS heuristic and the
average relative travel and purchase costs.
The results of Table 2 indicate that solution times
for problems with symmetric travel costs are gener-
ally higher as compared to those for asymmetric cost
problems. The reason may be that for every feasible
solution to such a problem there is always another
solution in reversed sequence but having the same
objective value. This results in more number of
alternatives to be examined. As regards the quality of
solutions produced by the heuristic it is seen that
quality deteriorates with the increase in problem size,
the only exception being the (10 × 15) problems.
The heuristic produced solutions which are 10 to
35% off the respective optimal solutions.
The overall conclusion that can be drawn from
these computational results is that the code, TRA-
PUR, can efficiently solve TPP with upto 20 cities
and 50 commodities. For problems of larger dimen-
sions, computation times may be comparatively
higher.
5. Applications and extensions
The structure of the traveling purchaser problem
applies to many real-life problems. We discuss here
some of its potential applications to job scheduling,
warehousing and routing. In the later portion of this
section we describe a possible extension of this
problem.
5.1. Job scheduling
As mentioned earlier, the job scheduling problem
considered by Burstall (1966) and later by Buzacott
and Dutta (1971) has the same structure as the TPP.
hik, in this case will represent the changeover cost
from state i to state k, and cij, the cost of processing
job j when the machine is in state i. The home city
(city 1) of the TPP may represent a dummy state of
the machine in which a dummy job, (n + 1), is
processed at cost zero. The changeover costs from
this dummy state to other states of the machine may
be set equal to zero. Then the solution to this prob-
lem (as obtained by TRAPUR) will give a sequence
of selected states in which different jobs are to be
processed.
However, in this procedure the initial bound given
by the SPLP will be loose as all f, values will be
zero due to the presence of zeros in a row and a
 K.N. Singh, D.L. van Oudheusden / E u r o p e a n Journal o f Operational Research 97 (1997) 5 7 1 - 5 7 9
column of the {hik} matrix. Subsequently, bounds
may improve. If, however, the initial or final state of
the sequence is known, the algorithm can be used as
it is and no dummy state will be needed at all. In that
case it is enough to modify the steps leading to the
construction of a tour in such a way that a path is
generated starting or ending at the specified node.
5.2. Warehousing
One of the most fundamental item retrieval prob-
lems associated with warehousing is the 'order-pick-
ing' problem. An order consists of a subset of items
stored in a warehouse. On receiving an order, the
warehouse dispatches a vehicle from the picking area
to 'pick' the items in the 'order' and transport them
back to the shipping area. The objective is to mini-
mize distance (or time) traveled by the vehicle.
For the situation when an item is stored in a
single location area of the warehouse, the order-pick-
ing problem has been recognized as a variant of the
TSP. However, when an item is stored in more than
one location area, the problem has the structure of a
TPP. Let i = 1, 2 . . . . . m, denote the location areas
of a warehouse with location 1 representing the
shipping area. Let j = 1, 2 . . . . . n, denote the items
stored in these areas. Then the two cost matrices for
the TPP may be constituted as follows.
H = {hik} will be an (m X m) matrix consisting of
traveling distances (costs) from one location area to
other. C = { c J will be an (m × m) matrix given by
0 if item j is stored in area i
Ci j = o¢ otherwise
Thus the order-picking problem becomes a special
case of TPP for which cli values are either 0 or oc.
This special feature may give some computational
advantage when the problem is solved by TRAPUR.
This is so because the bounding problem will reduce
to a set covering problem (SCP) which is easier to
solve. Moreover, sometimes two or more items share
the same location areas in a warehouse. These are
such items which are needed, most of the times,
simultaneously. In such cases each group of items is
stored in more than one area and the order-picking
problem is again an instance of TPP.
577
5.3. Routing
One of the routing applications of the TPP is in
the school bus problem. A school bus has to pass by
many points to gather children for the school. Let hik
represent the cost of driving from point i to point k.
Also, let cij be the distance from child j ' s house to
point i, weighted in order to be expressed in the
same unit as h/k. Now the problem is to determine
the tour of the bus which minimizes the sum of the
driving costs, h i k , and the weighted distances, cij,
walked by the children from their houses to the
nearest points of the tour. Obviously, this problem
has the same form as the TPP.
Current et al. (1984) introduced a problem called
shortest covering path problem (SCPP) which is a
synthesis of the set covering location problem and
the shortest path problem. The SCPP determines the
shortest path between two given nodes in a graph
such that all the demand nodes are covered. A
demand node is considered covered if either it is
directly on the shortest covering path or if it is
within a predetermined maximum distance from a
node on the path. The SCPP can be shown to be a
special case of the TPP. hik, as usual, will represent
the distance (cost) from node i to node k and cij
may be given by
0 if jth node is covered by ith node
ciJ= oc otherwise
Hence, both H and C will be (n × n) matrices,
where n is the total number of nodes in the graph. It
is interesting to note that the bounding problem
reduces to an SCP in this case as well.
Many potential applications of the SCPP to rout-
ing and network design problems have been dis-
cussed in Current et al. Due to the above relationship
between SCPP and the TPP all these also apply to
the latter. The design of a subway line or rail line
may be of particular interest. The stations may be
located at some of the population centers while the
neighboring areas will be covered by these stations.
Similarly, the same principle may be applied to
develop irrigation network in a given region or a
road network between two principal cities.
One of the two problems suggested by Ramesh
(1981) as possible extensions of the TPP is the
dynamic TPP. In this case, a time element is intro-
578 K.N. Singh, D.L. van Oudheusden / European Journal o f Operational Research 97 (1997)571-579

duced in the problem. All the cost parameters change
from one time period to another. This can also be
formulated in the same manner as its static counter-
part and the same solution procedure can be applied.
The only change needed is that a dynamic SPLP is to
be solved for determining the bound. A dynamic
SPLP can be transformed into an equivalent static
SPLP and it may be attempted by the same dual-based
method of Erlenkotter (1978). However, a slightly
improved procedure which incorporates primal-dual
adjustment in the dual ascent phase has been devel-
oped by Van Roy and Erlenkotter (1982). Their
D Y N A L O C code based on this algorithm has been
able to solve (15 × 30) problems of 8 periods in
fractions of a second on an IBM 3033 computer. So
this procedure can be embedded to the code, TRA-
PUR, for the solution of a dynamic TPP.
network design problems may be topics of further
study.
Acknowledgements
The work reported in this paper was carried out
while the first author was a doctoral student at the
Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok. The finan-
cial support provided for the study by the Govern-
ment of Japan is thankfully acknowledged. The au-
thors are indebted to the anonymous referees for
their comments which considerably improved the
presentation of the paper.
Appendix

Each step of the algorithm is now explained

6. C o n c l u d i n g remarks
The traveling purchaser problem, an extension of
the well-celebrated traveling salesman problem is
considered. Since the problem is NP-hard, possibility
of a polynomial time algorithm is most unlikely.
Hence, a branch and bound algorithm in which
bounds are determined by solving a related simple
plant location problem at each node is developed.
Computationally, this algorithm is found to have
considerably extended the size of problems that could
optimally be solved. The TPP may find applications
to many real-life problems, especially in the areas of
scheduling, warehousing and routing. Two important
combinatorial problems viz., 'order-picking' problem
and the shortest covering path problem may be treated
as the two special cases of TPP. Its extension to the
dynamic case may also be solved by the same proce-
dure. Application of TPP to solve some important
through an example problem taken from Ong (1982).
This is a 5 city-8 commodity problem for which cost
matrices H and C are given in Table 3. A 9th
commodity (dummy), which is available only at city
1 at cost zero, is added to ensure that city 1 (home
city) is always in the solution.
For the example problem f / = mink{h/k} =
{32, 16, 19, 8, 6}. With f/ as fixed costs and cij as
variable costs, the SPLP solution gives a lower
bound of 216 for the TPP. This forms the root of the
tree. The solution indicates that all the 5 facilities are
open, i.e. all the cities are to be visited. This gives a
tour of {(1, 2), (2, 5), (5, 3), (3, 5), (4, 2)} which is
acyclic and hence the tree will be extended from this
node having a bound, w ( P ) = 216.
We base the branching on a city pair (t, p) such
that the tours with city pair (t, p) excluded will give
as large a bound as possible. For this we calculate
the next higher costs, f~', for going out of the cities.

Table 3
(a) Travel cost matrix, H and (b) Commoditycost matrix, C of a 5-city, 8-commodityproblem.
i\k 1 2 3 4 5 i\j 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
I - 32 54 47 48 1 M M M M M M M M 0
2 18 - 22 25 16 2 M M 17 26 85 M 32 M M
3 39 41 - 28 19 3 42 82 63 94 60 M 12 55 M
4 26 8 30 - 24 4 60 10 57 8 M 95 96 9 M
5 35 17 6 9 - 5 M M M 80 21 16 M 77 M
(a) (b)
 K.N. Singh. D.L. van Oudheusden / European Journal of Operational Research 97 (1997) 571-579
2 tour of 1 - 3 - 5 - 4 - 2 - 1 at a travel cost of 108 units.
_ / N_ ~,~
/'-5 Y-"~ 2,,
2,5
An optimal tour is : [(1,3) ~(3~5) ,(5,4] ~(4~2)~ (2~1 ]l
Fig. 3. The final tree.
In this case fi' --- {47, 18, 28, 24, 9}. Now t is cho-
sen such that
i~A
( f ' t - f / ) = E {f/'-f/}
max
where A is the set of facilities (cities) that are open
(are to be visited) in the previous solution. P is the
city corresponding to which hip = f t . In the given
problem (f/' - f / ) = {15, 2, 9, 16, 3} and max(f/' -
fi) = ( f 4 - f 4 ) = 16. Hence t = 4. Also, since h42 =
f4, P = 2. Hence, the first branching is based on city
pair (4, 2).
The bound for the node ~ is 232. This is
obtained by solving the SPLP after setting ha2 = ac
and f4 = 24. The bound for the node (4, 2) is found
to be 231. This is done after deleting the 4th row and
2nd column of the matrix, H. Also, the subtour of 2
to 4 is prevented by setting h24 = ~. The values of f/
for this case are {47, 16, 19, 8, 6}.
Now the node (4, 2) is branched on the basis of
city pair (3, 5). Next we go to the right from 3, 5 on
the basis of (5, 4) where we get a feasible solution,
579
{(1, 3), (3, 5), (5, 4), (4, 2), (2, 1)} with a cost 243.
Now the left-hand branches are searched till the tree
is complete (see Fig. 3).
An optimal solution to the above problem gives a
The total commodity cost is 135 units. Commodity 9
is to be purchased from city 1; commodity 3 from
city 2; commodities 1 and 7 from city 3; commodi-
ties 2, 4, 8 from city 4; and commodities 5, 6 from
city 5.
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