Transportation and Assignment Problem:

Transportation  problem is the  problem of determining the minimum  cost for  allocating a product from  several supply sources to several destinations. For  example  a cold  drink  manufacturing  company  has say four  plants located in four different cities and the total production of these four plants is  absorbed by four shops located in different cities an d if we are to determine a transportation schedule that minimizes the total cost of transporting cold drinks form different plant locations to  various  shops then it is a case of transportation problem. A simplified version of the  simple method  talked about in  case of linear programming can be used in solving such  problems  and this simplified  version  is often  known as the transportation algorithm. At times  this is  also known  as the  transportation methods  or the distribution  methods.