Comparative Study of Existing Initial Basic Feasible Solutions in Transportation Problems

This paper presents a comparative analysis of different methods for obtaining Initial Basic Feasible Solutions (IBFS) in transportation problems. The transportation problem is a classical optimization problem in operations research, requiring an efficient and effective method to minimize transportation costs. Traditional methods such as the North-West Corner Method (NWCM), Least Cost Method (LCM), and Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM) are evaluated against recently proposed techniques. The study uses quantitative and qualitative metrics, including optimality gap, execution time, and computational efficiency, across various problem instances. The results highlight the strengths and limitations of each approach, providing insights for their application in logistics and supply chain optimization. The proposed algorithms are designed to ensure uniqueness and improved efficiency in IBFS generation, demonstrating superior performance in computational experiments.