Transportation and Assignment Models (chapter 5)

Dr. GJ Oyewole
School of Mechanical, Industrial and Aeronautical Engineering
University of the Witwatersrand

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Transportation Model basics
 LP special case
 All constraints equality (classical)
 One basic commodity ( newer extensions)
 m sources to transport to n destinations -
represented by nodes
 Routes linking supply to demand = arcs
 Arc(𝑖𝑖, 𝑗𝑗) from source 𝑖𝑖 to destination 𝑗𝑗
 Transportation costs associated with arc = 𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖
 Cost per unit (𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖) x number of units (𝑥𝑥𝑖𝑖𝑖𝑖)

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Transportation Model basics

• If demand = supply, problem is balanced, otherwise add a

dummy supply / destination with 0 cost to balance
• Transportation problems are a sub-type of the minimum cost
capacitated network model (Ch22.1)
• LP that can be formulated and solved with a simpler variant
of the simplex algorithm
• Number of basic variables must be = m (sources) +
n (destinations) -1 (even if some have a value of zero!)

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Transportation Model Formulation and Representation

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Transportation Model Tableau

Example transportation tableau

right top
corner cij

supply
per
source i
ai

current
value of
xij

demand per
destination j - bj

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Solving the Classical Transportation Problem
( Transportation Algorithm)

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Solving the Classical Transportation Problem

• After computing penalties allocate as much as

possible to least cost unit and break ties arbitrarily
• If row/column are satisfied arbitrarily select one and
assign zero to the other row/column

Stopping
Re-compute criteria 7
penalties
Improving the Starting solution by method of
multipliers

• 𝑢𝑢𝑖𝑖 + 𝑣𝑣𝑖𝑖 = 𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗 • 𝑢𝑢𝑖𝑖 + 𝑣𝑣𝑖𝑖 ≥ 𝑜𝑜𝑜𝑜 ≤ 𝑐𝑐𝑖𝑖𝑗𝑗

• Rooted in
duality theory • Select highest positive : minimization 8
objective
 Step 3. Determine the leaving variable
• Start with the new entering basic variable, assign xij = θ
• Find a closed loop through the basic variables, alternating row / col
moves
• Assigned values become alternating xij - θ ; xij + θ .
• Make sure all new values are xij - θ ≥ 0
• Calculate biggest allowable value for θ - the cell with the first limit is
the leaving variable – more than one, pick the one with the highest
cost

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Assignment Model

• For each workers 𝑖𝑖 ( 𝑖𝑖 = 1 𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 𝑁𝑁), only

one job can be done.
• For each jobs 𝑗𝑗 ( 𝑗𝑗 = 1 𝑡𝑡𝑡𝑡 𝑛𝑛 ) only one
• Variant of transportation one worker can be chosen
model
• Source = worker
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• Destination => jobs
Solving the Assignment Model

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Tutorial questions
• See the Ulwazi Course page

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