ABSTRACT
Transportation problem is another case of application to linear programming problems, where some physical distribution (transportation) of resources is to be made from one place to another to meet certain set of requirements with in the given availability. The places from where the resources are to be transferred are referred to as sources or origins. These sources or origins will have the availability or capacity or supply of resources. There are several methods available for finding initial basic feasible solution of transportation problem. This chapter discusses three important methods viz. North West Corner Method, Vogel’s Approximation Method and Least Cost Entry Method (LCEM). LCEM concentrates on the cells having least cost. Thus the allocation entry is to be made in the cell with least cost among all the cells. In general the degeneracy can be identified in transportation problem while finding Initial Basic Feasible Solution itself.
