Chapter 15 CD – Transportation and Assignment Problems
15-1
1. Transportation problems are concerned with distributing commodities from sources to
destinations in such a way as to minimize the total distribution cost.
2. Transportation problems always involve shipping goods from one location to another.
3. The requirements assumption states that each source has a fixed supply of units, where the
entire supply must be distributed to the destinations and that each destination has a fixed
demand for units, where the entire demand must be received from the sources.
4. The feasible solutions property states that a pure transportation problem will have feasible
solutions if and only if the sum of its supplies equals the sum of its demands.
5. The transportation model assumes shipping cost per unit is the same regardless of the
number of units shipped.
6. The transportation model assumes that shipping costs are dependent on the distance that
goods are shipped.
15-4
23. It is not possible to adjust the transportation simplex method to maximize instead of
minimize.
24. An assignment problem is a special type of transportation problem
25. Generally, assignment problems match people to an equal number of tasks at a minimum
cost.
26. Many problems can be reformulated to fit the format of an assignment problem.
27. Assignment problems are just a special type of transportation problem where the sources
are now tasks to be performed.
28. When the assumptions of an assignment problem are satisfied, all that needs to be done to
formulate a problem is to identify the assignees and tasks.
29. Network representation provides a way of visualizing an assignment problem graphically.
30. In an assignment problem, every destination has a demand of 0 or 1.
