Multi-index constrained transportation problem with bounds on availabilities, requirements and commodities

• Main Authors: Archana Khurana, Veena Adlakha, Benjamin Lev
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier 2018-01-01
• Series: Operations Research Perspectives
• Online Access: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2214716018300666

In this paper, we consider a multi-index constrained transportation problem (CTP) of axial constraints with bounds on destination requirements, source availabilities, and multiple types of commodities. The specified problem is converted into a related transportation problem by adding a source, a destination, and a commodity, making it equivalent to a standard axial sum problem. This related problem is transformed into a multi-index transportation problem that can be solved easily. The provided solution method is very useful for transporting heterogeneous commodities. A transportation model may sometimes have various capacity constraints on the flow between pairs of origins and destinations. Moreover, budgetary, political, and emergency situations may impair or enhance the flow between origins and destinations, making it critical for a manager to reevaluate allocations. These considerations have motivated us to explore the multi-index CTP with impaired and enhanced flow. We present several numerical examples to demonstrate the proposed algorithms. Keywords: Classical transportation problem, Multi index, Impaired flow, Unbalanced, Optimal solution