Duality in LPP

Dual
• Associated with every linear programming problem
there is a corresponding LPP called its Dual problem.
• The original problem is called as primal.
• This dual problem helps in certain economics related
interpretations.
• Usually standard problems are comfortable to get
the dual problem well defined.
• It is the usual practice that a LPP is converted into its
standard form before going for its dual.
 Primal
•  Consider a standard problem,

Subject to
 Dual
•  The dual problem of this standard LPP is

Subject to
 Theorem
• It has been shown that the Optimum value the
Primal problem and the Optimum value of the
dual are equal
 Example
•  Consider the problem
Subject to
•  The dual of this problem is

Subject to
• In the LPP there are two questions that can be answered.
• 1. What is the optimal production plan?
• 2. What should be paid for an additional unit of the
resources?
• The first question is answered using the solution of LPP.
• The answer to the second question can be provided by
the dual problem.
• Let us assume that there are two resources, say, raw
material and man-hour availability. The number of units of
each resource required for each product is already known.
•• Suppose
  it is required to know the “Worth” of the
resources.
• Let y1 and y2 be the worth of one unit of raw material and
man-hour requirement respectively.
• Then and are the worth of one chair and one table
respectively.
• The manufacturer is interested in checking whether the
worth of a chair i.e., is greater than Rs.45.
• Similarly, for the table it is required to see if its worth, i.e.,
• is greater than 80.
• The dual becomes very useful in answering this problem.
• How?
• It may be seen that if the worth of a chair is greater than Rs.45,
production of chairs is to be stopped.
• Similarly, it is understood that the worth of a table is less than Rs.80
to continue production.
• Solution to the dual problem can be seen as y1 =1 and y2 = 4 which
tells that these are the worth of each resource at the optimal level
of production.
• This is equivalent to saying that the producer will have profit if he
can acquire additional unit of resource for a price less than Rs.1 for
raw material and Rs.4 for man-hour requirement.