Minimizing the Cost of Transportation
Read this article. The study employed a transportation model to find the minimum cost of transporting manufactured goods from factories to warehouses. As you read, think of some factors that can greatly increase transportation and logistics time.
Data Analysis
Optimality Test for Least Cost Method
We solved for Least cost method in Table 4 but here, we want to obtain the best (optimal) possible solution for the Least cost method.
The optimality test after third iteration still indicates that there is a need for optimization of the solution, and hence we proceeded to the fourth iteration as given in Table 9. Table 9 shows that the optimal solution (Basic Feasible Solution) is being reached and there were a noticeable drop in the total cost of distribution in comparison to the previous iterations for the least square method.
Where, Min Z= 5(21600) + 19(3700) + 12(14700) + 81(900) +26(19500) + 23(16800) + 62(10500) + 0(11900) + 0(8100)
= 108000 + 70300 + 176400 + 72900 + 507000 + 386400 + 651000 + 0 + 0
=1,972,000
The result also shows that when using least cost method, the best allocation routine to follow would be that of Table 9 because optimum solution was reached in the fifth iteration. This allocation requires less cost compared to the other iterations.
Table 9. Fourth Iteration