IJRAR22C1598

© 2022 IJRAR July 2022, Volume 9, Issue 3 www.ijrar.
org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)
OPTIMUM SOLUTION OF A
TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM WITH AN
EXCEL SOLVER
Bhawna Agrawala, Sanjeet Kumarb , Gaurav Sharmac
a Departmentof Mathematics, Rabindranath Tagore University, Bhopal, India,
b Departmentof Mathematics Lakshmi Narain College of Technology & Science, Bhopal, India,
c Department of Applied Science, Sagar Institute of Research & Technology, Bhopal, India,
ABSTRACT
Transportation problem is one of the appropriate method to determine the optimum path for supplier to transport goods
from supply centre to demand centre by keeping the minimum transportation cost. This study analyses the identical
results while solving the problem by both methods Vogel’s method and excel solver technique. Here we found that the
advantage of excel solver technique is easy to implementation and also get the faster and appropriate solution for large
amount of data.
KEYWORDS
Transportation problem, Initial feasible solution, Excel Solver.
INTRODUCTION
The Transportation Problem is a fundamental network flow problem where minimizing transportation costs is
necessary while meeting supply limits and demand requirements for industries with numerous sources and
destinations. Its initially studied by F.L. Hitchock [1] this entitled by title “The Distribution of a Product from Several
sources to numerous Location” and after this study T. C. Koopmans [2] is presenting historic paper “Optimum
Utilization of the Transportation System”. These two-study helped in the expansion of transportation methods which
include a number of distribution sources and a number of destinations. Bhavana et al [9] helps an overview of "A study
of linear programming technique", After this Study many researchers done work in this area like Sharma and Swarup
[3], Sehan and Tikekar [4], Sonia at al [5], G Sharma [6,7], Bhavana et al [8] and Maleki et al [10] presented a fuzzy
goal programming approach to get optimal solution of multi-objective transportation problem.
Transportation Model: The transportation problem is most powerful tool of Linear Programming Problem
(LPP). It deals with minimum cost called as minimizing transportation cost by limited supply sources (like factory,
manufacturing facility) to destinations (like warehouse, store) has a demand to be satisfied. Cost of shipping from a
source to a destination is directly proportional to the number of units shipped.
Basic Notation:
 m = The number of sources (i = 1 … m)
 n = The number of destinations (j = 1 … n)
 c i,j = A unit cost of shipping from source i to destination j
 x i,j = A amount shipped from source i to destination j
 a i = Shows supply at source i
 b j = Shows demand at destination j
IJRAR22C1598 International Journal of Research and Analytical Reviews (IJRAR) www.ijrar.org 892
© 2022 IJRAR July 2022, Volume 9, Issue 3 www.ijrar.org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)
Thus, a transportation problem has m rows (Sources) and n columns(destinations).
Methods of Solving Transportation Problem
For obtaining the initial solution by any of the three methods are:
a. There must be feasible solution,

i.e., the supply and demand constraints must be satisfied.
b. For the positive allocations, N = m+n-1,
where m shows number of rows and n shows number of columns.
[A] Formulate the problem.
Formulate the given problem
Set up in a matrix form

problem
Check whether the problem is a balanced or unbalanced transportation problem
If unbalanced, add dummy source (row) or dummy destination (column)
[B] Obtain the initial feasible solution.

Three common methods for Obtaining the initial feasible solution:
 First (NWC) North-West Corner Method

 Second (LCM) Least Cost Method
 Third (VAM)Vogel’s Approximation Method
By VAM transportation cost of the initial feasible solution will be less as compare two NMC and LCM.
Problem 1: Let be a company has three factories at 𝐹1 , 𝐹2 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐹3 . 𝑇ℎ𝑒𝑠𝑒 𝑓𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑒𝑠 supply warehouses at 𝑊1 ,
𝑊2 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑊3 . But weekly each factory capacities are 200 units, 160units and 90 units respectively. Whereas weekly
warehouses requirements are 180units, 120units and 150units respectively. It is given in tabular form unit shipping
costs are.
Warehouse Supply
Factory
W1 W2 W3
F1 16 20 12 200
F2 14 08 18 160
F3 26 24 16 90
Demand 180 120 150
Now our aim is to determine the optimum distribution for this company to optimize shipping costs.
Solution:
By Vogel’s Approximation Method:

An initial basic feasible solution is obtained in the table (a) as below;
Table (a)
Demand and Supply:
Stepping Stone method: Evaluate each of the unoccupied cells.

i.e., (F1, W2), (F2, W3), (F3, W1), (F3, W2) to examine whether it would improve the initial solution by introducing
any of these cells into the current solution basis.
Now to demonstrate the application of this method let us evaluate the unoccupied cell
(F1, W2) of table (a). Assign 𝜃 units to be shipped from factory F1 to warehouse W2.
An addition of a unit to cell (F1, W2) adds Rs 20 to the cost.
Since the requirements of the warehouse must be satisfied, we adjust the allocation of the cell
(F1, W1) by subtracting 𝜃 units from the initial assignment of 140 units which decreases the cost by Rs 16 per unit.
In order to make this adjustment and to satisfy the supply restriction at factories F1 and F2 we subtract 𝜃 units from
cell (F2, W2) and then add 𝜃 units to cell (F2, W1).
Thus, a closed path followed in making these adjustments is given below:
By the following the closed path and analysing the unit shipment, we can compute the incremental cost evaluation of
unoccupied cell (F1, W2) as follows:
Table (b)
This indicates that shift of 1 unit into unoccupied cell (F1, W2) increases the transportation cost by Rs 10. Obviously,
cell (F1, W2) is not included in the assignment.
Table(c)
Let us compute the opportunity cost for one more unoccupied cell (F2, W2). As before we assign
𝜃 units to cell (F2, W3) and make necessary adjustments in cells (F1, W3). (F1, W1) and (F2, W1).
The closed path associated with assignment is shown in Table (c).
The change in cost is (𝟏𝟖 × 𝟏 − 𝟏𝟐 × 𝟏 + 𝟏𝟔 × 𝟏 − 𝟏𝟒 × 𝟏), i.e., Rs 8 per unit.
Since this route is more expensive than our initial solution, we shall not plan any change based on this evaluation.
Now to evaluate the remaining unoccupied cells (F3, W1) and (F3, W2). The path suggested for these is shown below;
Table (d)
Table (e)
The closed path and an incremental cost change for each of unoccupied cells are given below:
Since none of the unoccupied cells in the above table is associated with a negative value, the total transportation costs
will either remain the same or increase if a shift of the unit is made to any one of the unoccupied cells.
Hence the preceding table provides an optimum plan as follow:
𝐹1 𝑤1 𝑖. 𝑒. , 𝑥11 = 140, 𝐹1 𝑤2 𝑖. 𝑒. 𝑥12 = 0, 𝐹1 𝑤3 𝑖. 𝑒. , 𝑥13 = 60 ;
𝐹2 𝑤1 𝑖. 𝑒. , 𝑥21 = 40, 𝐹2 𝑤2 𝑖. 𝑒. , 𝑥22 = 120, 𝐹2 𝑤3 𝑖. 𝑒. 𝑥23 = 0 ;
𝐹3 𝑤1 𝑖. 𝑒., ∶ 𝑥31 = 0, 𝐹3 𝑤2 𝑖. 𝑒. , 𝑥32 = 0, 𝐹3 𝑤3 𝑖. 𝑒. 𝑥33 = 90 ;
Total Transportation Cost = Rs 5920

By excel solver technique
Step 1. First check weather demand and supply match or not, if yes then processed and if not then add dummy row
and column.
Here demand and supply matches. i.e., Supply = Demand = 450
Create a table and shift Demand and Supply to one row and column.
Step 2.[1] Use formula for Capacity and Requirement in spreadsheet.
= sum(row1) and = sum(column1) then drags.
[2] Use a formula for objective function in spreadsheet.
= SUMPRODUCT (B3:D5, B10:D12)
Step 3. Go to DATA then to SOLVER. Click. Solver parameter will show as below then fill all the entries:
[a] For Set Objective click to ‘Obective function formula applied’ i.e., $B$17
[b] Then click to ‘min’

[c] For changing variable cell select to 3*3 cell i.e., $B$10:$D$12
[c] For Subject to constraint ‘$E$10:$E$12’ then ‘<=’ and then ‘=$G$10:$G$12’ then click ‘Add’
Again ‘ $B$13:$D$13’ then ‘=’ and then ‘=$B$15:$D$15’ then click ‘OK’
Thus, we get
Select ‘Simplex LP’
Step 4. Press SOLVE then we will get solver Result. Then selct all reports (answer, senensitivity and limit), press
OK.
Step 5. We get all the result as below
Thus, the total Transportation cost is Rs 5920.

As Result we get 3 reports “Answer, Sensitivity and Limits”
CONCLUTION
We have analysis the above result and we found that Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM), Step Stone
Method (SSM) and excel solver technique all are provided the unique solution of our problems with unique
constraint. Here we also found one more thing is that transportation cost is optimum because excel solver
technique is applying simplex method to solve transportation problem. In Other hand we can said that VAM
and SSM are always provided initial basic feasible solution but excel solver is always generated optimum
solution of any problems without using any supplementary methods.
REFERENCES:
1. Hitchock, F L.,“The distribution of product from several source to numerous localities”, J Maths Phy., Vol
20, (1941) PP 224-230.
2. Koopman, T. C., “Optimum utilization of transportation system”, Proc Intern. Statics Conf Washington
D.C., (1947)
3. Sharma, J. K., Swarup, K., “Time minimizing transportation Problems”, Proceeding of indian academy of
science-Mathematical Science, Vol. 86, (1977), PP 513-518.
4. Seshan, C.R., Tikekar, V.G., “On the sharma swarup algorithm for time minimizing transportation
problems”, Proceeding of indian Academy of Sciences Mathematical Science, Vol 89, (1980), PP 101-102.
5. Sonia, Khandelwal, A., Puri, M.C, “Bilevel time minimizing transportation problem”, Discrete
Optimization, Vol 5, No 4, (2008), PP 714-723.
6. Gaurav Sharma, Vaibhav Sharma, Kamal Raj Pardasani, Mohammed Alshehri, “Soft set based
intelligent assistive model for multiobjective and multimodal transportation problem”, IEEE Access, Vol 8
(2020), PP 102646-10-2656
7. Gaurav Sharma, SH Abbas, Vijay Kumar Gupta, “Solving multi-objective transportation problem to
reduce transportation cost and time” JOURNAL OF ADVANCES IN MATHEMATICS, Vol 11, issue 1,
8. Bhavana Shrivastava, Bhawna Agrawal and Sanjeet Kumar, "Fuzzy linear programming problem with
α-cut and roubast ranking methods", International Journal of Statistics and Applied Mathematics; Peer
Reviewed Journal, Refereed Journal, Indexed Journal, ISSN: 2456-1452, Impact Factor: RJIF 5.34 Volume:
7; Issue : 2; Year : 2022; Page Number : 57-62; Date: 01-03-2022.
https://www.mathsjournal.com/archives/2022/vol7/issue2/PartA
9. Preeti Tewari and Bhawna Agrawal, "A study of linear programming technique", International Journal of
Statistics and Applied Mathematics; Peer Reviewed Journal, Refereed Journal, Indexed Journal, ISSN: 2456-
1452, Impact Factor: RJIF 5.34 Volume: 7; Issue: 2; Year: 2022; Page Number: 54-56; Date: 01-03-2022.
https://www.mathsjournal.com/archives/2022/vol7/issue2/PartA
10. Zangibadi, M and Maleki, R., “Fuzzy goal programming for multi-objective
transportation problem”, Applied Mathematics and Computation, Vol 24, (2007),
PP 449-460

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© 2022 IJRAR July 2022, Volume 9, Issue 3 www.ijrar.

org (E-ISSN 2348-1269, P- ISSN 2349-5138)

Transportation problem, Initial feasible solution, Excel Solver.

Thus, a transportation problem has m rows (Sources) and n columns(destinations).

Methods of Solving Transportation Problem

a. There must be feasible solution,

Formulate the given problem

Set up in a matrix form

If unbalanced, add dummy source (row) or dummy destination (column)

[B] Obtain the initial feasible solution.

 First (NWC) North-West Corner Method

By Vogel’s Approximation Method:

Stepping Stone method: Evaluate each of the unoccupied cells.

Total Transportation Cost = Rs 5920

Step 2.[1] Use formula for Capacity and Requirement in spreadsheet.

= sum(row1) and = sum(column1) then drags.

[2] Use a formula for objective function in spreadsheet.

= SUMPRODUCT (B3:D5, B10:D12)

[b] Then click to ‘min’

Select ‘Simplex LP’

Step 5. We get all the result as below

Thus, the total Transportation cost is Rs 5920.

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