Selecting The Best Initial Method For A Transportation Problem

Abstract

This paper is concerned with determining the best initial method for a transportation problem. Seven initial methods are considered and compared. One is a new method that has not been reported in the literature.  Comparison is done on the basis of the number of iterations required to reach the final solution if the concerned methods were used as the initial methods. A C-program was developed to facilitate getting results for the number of iterations. Two statistical packages, (SPSS) and (SAS) were then used in determining the statistical performance between the methods based on the results obtained using the C- program.

Keywords: Transportation problems, Initial methods of solving transportation problems, Analysis of variance