The classic transportation problem that you can find in most linear programming books (or by a quick search of the Internet) is set up something like this: You have a set of source points with a given amount of supply available and a set of demand points with a required amount of demand needed. The total supply equals the total demand. However, the individual supply and demand points do not need to match up. For example, let’s assume that Supply Point #1 has 100 units available, Supply Point #2 has 120 units available, and the three Demand Points require 75, 90, and 55 units. Then, there is a cost to assign each demand point to each supply point.
a. Explain how this model is equivalent to the model in this chapter.
b. What assumptions does the Transportation Problem make about assigning demand to source points? How is this different from some formulations we have made in this chapter? How would this impact the Classic Transportation Problem?