Tutorial Sheet on Transportation, Assignment, And Transshipment Problems

Question No. 1
Consider the transportation problem with following data

Use each of the following methods to obtain an initial BF solution. Compare the values of the
objective function for these solutions.
(a) Northwest corner rule (b) Least cost method (c) Vogel’s approximation method
Question No. 2
The coach of an age group swim team needs to assign swimmers to a 200-yard medley relay
team to send to the Junior Olympics. Since most of his best swimmers are very fast in more
than one stroke, it is not clear which swimmer should be assigned to each of the four strokes.
The five fastest swimmers and the best times (in seconds) they have achieved in each of the
strokes (for 50 yards) are

The coach wishes to determine how to assign four swimmers to the four different strokes to
minimize the sum of the corresponding best times.
(a) Formulate this problem as an assignment problem.
(b) Obtain an optimal solution.
Question No. 3
The Onenote Co. produces a single product at three plants for four customers. The three
plants will produce 60, 80, and 40 units, respectively, during the next time period. The firm
has made a commitment to sell 40 units to customer 1, 60 units to customer 2, and at least 20
units to customer 3. Both customers 3 and 4 also want to buy as many of the remaining units
as possible. The net profit associated with shipping a unit from plant i for sale to customer j is
given by the following table:
a) Formulate this problem as a transportation problem where the objective function is to be
maximized by constructing the appropriate parameter table that gives unit profits.
(b) Now formulate this transportation problem with the usual objective of minimizing total
cost by converting the parameter table from part (a) into one that gives unit costs instead of
unit profits.
Question No. 4
The Build-Em-Fast Company has agreed to supply its best customer with three widgets
during each of the next 3 weeks, even though producing them will require some overtime
work. The relevant production data are as follows:

The cost per unit produced with overtime for each week is $100 more than for regular time.
The cost of storage is $50 per unit for each week it is stored. There is already an inventory of
two widgets on hand currently, but the company does not want to retain any widgets in
inventory after the 3 weeks. Management wants to know how many units should be produced
in each week to minimize the total cost of meeting the delivery schedule.
(a) Formulate this problem as a transportation problem by constructing the appropriate
parameter table.
(b) Obtain an optimal solution.
Question No. 5
Four cargo ships will be used for shipping goods from one port to four other ports (labeled 1,
2, 3, 4). Any ship can be used for making any one of these four trips. However, because of
differences in the ships and cargoes, the total cost of loading, transporting, and unloading the
goods for the different ship-port combinations varies considerably, as shown in the following
table:
The objective is to assign the four ships to four different ports in such a way as to minimize
the total cost for all four shipments.
(a) Describe how this problem fits into the general format for the assignment problem.
(b) Obtain an optimal solution.
Question No. 6
The Childfair Company has three plants producing child push chairs that are to be shipped to
four distribution centers. Plants 1, 2, and 3 produce 12, 17, and 11 shipments per month,
respectively. Each distribution center needs to receive 10 shipments per month. The distance
from each plant to the respective distributing centers is given to the right:

The freight cost for each shipment is $100 plus 50 cents per mile. How much should be
shipped from each plant to each of the distribution centers to minimize the total shipping
cost?
(a) Formulate this problem as a transportation problem by constructing the appropriate
parameter table.
(b) Draw the network representation of this problem.
(c) Obtain an optimal solution.
Question No. 7
The network in the figure gives the shipping routes from nodes 1 and 2 to nodes 5 and 6 by
way of nodes 3 and 4. The unit shipping costs are shown on the respective arcs.
(a) Develop the corresponding transshipment model.
 (b) Solve the problem, and show how the shipments are routed from the sources to the
destinations.

Question No. 8
Consider the following transshipment problem with two destinations. The costs for shipment
in rupees are given below:
Source Destination Supply
S1 S2 D1 D2
Source S1 0 1 3 4 5
S2 1 0 2 4 25
Destination D1 3 2 0 1 -
D2 4 4 1 0 -
Demand - - 20 10

Determine the optimum shipping schedule.

Question No. 9
Find the non-degenerate basic feasible solution for the following transportation problem
using
a) NWCR
b) VAM
Supply
Destination 1 2 3 4
1 10 20 5 7 10
2 13 9 12 8 20
Source 3 4 5 7 9 30
4 14 7 1 9 40
5 3 12 5 19 50
Demand 60 60 20 10
Question No. 10
Solve the minimal assignment problem whose cost matrix is given below. Also, give all
possible optimal solutions.
 1 2 3 4
I 2 3 4 5
II 4 5 6 7
III 7 8 9 8
IV 3 5 8 4

Question No. 11
Four new machines M1, M2, M3, and M4 are to be installed in a machine shop. There are
vacant places A, B, C, D, and E available for installation. Because of limited space, machine
M2 and M3 cannot be placed at C and A, respectively. The cost matrix is shown below. Find
the optimal location of machines.
A B C D E
M1 4 6 10 5 4
M2 7 4 - 5 4
M3 - 6 9 6 2
M4 9 3 7 2 3