COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF INITIAL SOLUTION METHODS FOR THE TRANSPORTATION PROBLEM

Abstract

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of four classical heuristics for generating initial feasible solutions to the transportation problem: the Northwest Corner Method (NWC), Least Cost Method (LCM), Double Preference Method (DPM), and Vogel’s Approximation Method (VAM). A balanced transportation instance is analysed to quantify the impact of each method on total transportation cost. Results demonstrate that cost-aware heuristics significantly outperform the Northwest Corner approach, yielding identical minimum initial costs in the studied case. The study highlights the importance of intelligent initialization for accelerating convergence toward optimal solutions in logistics and production systems.