Can the Fixed-Cost Transportation Problem Be Solved with the Initial Solution Methods of the Transportation Problem?

Abstract

From the dawn of humanity's existence to the present day and beyond, there will always be production and service systems to meet the demands at every point of consumption. In this context, transporting goods from production and service resources to consumption points will continue to play a significant role. Supply Chain Management and its sub-systems, particularly logistics and hence the Transportation Problem, will be crucial for the functioning of these systems. This study focuses on the Fixed-Cost Transportation Problem. A novel heuristic approach has been proposed for this problem, and the success of the heuristic has been analyzed through a group of test problems compared with similar methods in the literature. The proposed heuristic has shown promising results.