Title: A novel approach for obtaining initial basic solution of transportation problem

Authors: Farzad Pargar; Adel Pourramzan Ganji; Hannaneh Rashidi Bajgan

Addresses: Department of Industrial Engineering, Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 734, Babol, Mazandaran, Iran ' Department of Computer and Information Technology, Mazandaran University of Science and Technology, P.O. Box 734, Babol, Mazandaran, Iran ' Departmant of Planning and Design, Pars-Infotech International Co, West Garmsar, Vanak Sq., Tehran, Iran

Abstract: The importance of finding efficient solutions for large-sized transportation problems (TPs) are borne out by many practical problems in industries, military affairs, etc. In this way, each optimal solution algorithm needs an initial basic feasible solution that could lead to a better start of the heuristic solution and less works to reach an optimal solution. With this motivation, we develop a high-impact heuristic approach entitled maximum demand to obtain the initial solution, which leads to fast, accurate and efficient optimal solutions of TPs. For the evaluation of the proposed heuristic, computational experiments were generated to compare it with other well-known heuristics in the literature. The results demonstrate the high performance of our heuristic in terms of different criteria.

Keywords: transport problems; heuristics; VAM; Vogel; approximation method; TOC; total opportunity cost; maximum demand; logistics management; supply chain management; SCM.

DOI: 10.1504/IJISE.2012.048286

International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, 2012 Vol.12 No.1, pp.84 - 99

Published online: 20 Dec 2014 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article