BUS606: Operations and Supply Chain Management

From the results of the analysis carried out above, it is shown that all three methods of finding initial basic feasible solution (North-West corner method, Least Cost method and Vogel Approximation method) gave varying answers. The North-West corner method gave transportation cost of ₦2,336,000, Least Cost method gave transportation cost of ₦4,160,900 and Vogel Approximation method gave ₦2,331,800 as its transportation cost. The above result shows that Vogel Approximation method is the most efficient of all the methods in finding the Initial Basic Feasible Solution because it has the least transportation cost before optimization was carried out and require less iteration compared to least cost method. And after the optimization, all the three methods (North-West corner method, Least Cost method and Vogel Approximation method) gave the same result of ₦1,972,000. This indicates that, all the three methods (North-West corner method, Least Cost method and Vogel Approximation method) can be used to find an optimal (best) solution (Basic Feasible Solution) for a given transportation problem.

From the optimization tableau of Vogel approximation method, allocations of 21600 bags was made from CCNN to Sokoto, 3700 bags from CCNN to Kebbi and 14700 bags from CCNN to Zamfara. 19500 bags was allocated from OBU plant allocates to Kano, 16800 bags from OBU plant to Kaduna and 10500 bags from OBU plant to Katsina. The dummy variable allocates 11900 bags Kebbi and 8100 bags to Niger republic.

This transportation model will be useful for making strategic decisions by the logistics managers at BUA Cement Company in making optimum allocation of the production from the two plants (CCNN and OBU) to the various customers (distributors) at a minimum transportation cost.