<p>Leaders and Followers algorithm was a novel metaheuristics proposed by Yasser Gonzalez-Fernandez and Stephen Chen. In solving unconstrained optimization, it performed better exploration than other well-known metaheuristics, e.g. Genetic Algorithm, Particle Swarm Optimization and Differential Evolution. Therefore, it performed well in multi-modal problems. In this paper, Leaders and Followers was modified for constrained non-linear optimization. Several well-known benchmark problems for constrained optimization were used to evaluate the proposed algorithm. The result of the evaluation showed that the proposed algorithm consistently and successfully found the optimal solution of low dimensional constrained optimization problems and high dimensional optimization with high number of linear inequality constraint only. Moreover, the proposed algorithm had difficulty in solving high dimensional optimization problem with non-linear constraints and any problem which has more than one equality constraint. In the comparison with other metaheuristics, Leaders and Followers had better performance in overall benchmark problems.</p>

Leaders and Followers algorithm is a metaheuristic algorithm which uses two sets of solutions and avoid comparison between random exploratory sample solutions and the best solutions. In this paper, it is used to solve the balanced transportation problem. There are some modifications in the proposed algorithm in order to fit the algorithm to the problem. The proposed algorithm is evaluated using 138 problems. The results are better than the results obtained by other algorithm from previous studies. Overall, Leaders and Followers algorithm has no difficulty in finding optimal solution, even in problems that have large dimension, number of supply and number of demands.