A New Approach to Solving Transportation Problems: The Middle Cell Method

Abstract

This study centers on another method of solving transportation problems called the Middle Cell method (MCM). This is achieved by finding the optimal basic feasible solution through allocating as many units as possible equal to the minimum cost between available supply and demand through the center of the transportation table. Results from the numerical examples showed that the Middle-Cell method was optimal (especially when the rows and columns are not equal having an even number of rows and an odd number of columns or vice versa). When compared with other transportation techniques, the Middle cell method does better than the North-West corner method (NWCM), the North-East Corner method (NECM), the South-West Corner method (SWCM) and the South-East Corner method (SECM). Finally, this new approach competes favourably with the Least Cost method (LCM).