In a sense these three steps are the building blocks of the reduction process. In this sense the specifications (1) provide the direction for the reduction process and the mortar needed for a unified structure. As might be expected with a direct method, the essence of the process is simple. Using lemma 1, either a solution results immediately or, if not, a deficiency is discovered which indicates the next step. There is an informal version of the process for hand calculation and a formal version for machine calculation. Using the values of ai and bj shown in the matrix C(2) of Table 2, it is seen that the superscripts, indicating the values of xij = 0, can be assigned at once. Similarly this can be done in the matrix C(1) of Table 1, but here there are multiple