ABSTRACT
So far in a network analysis (outlined in Chapter 7), a node had represented a customer and service was provided by a new facility that was placed either on a node or on a branch. The objective was to develop (or select) the optimum location for the new facility. Consider now a set of problems for which some nodes represent customers, whereas others represent suppliers. We want to provide service from the existing facilities (suppliers) to existing customers to satisfy some objective. Thus, the problem now is to allocate the customers to the existing facilities, and the only paths we are concerned about are the paths between customers and suppliers. When the objective is to minimize the cost of transportation by selecting specific paths from supplier to customers, the problem is called transportation problem. There are several good books in operations research that illustrate the procedures for solving such problems. Most readers are familiar with transportation, for a brief description was provided in Section 9.2.
