5.3 THE TRANSPORTATION ALGORITHM
The transportation algorithm follows the exact steps of the simplex method (Chapter 3).
However, instead of using the regular simplex tableau, we take advantage of the special structure of the transportation model to organize the computations in a more convenient form.
The special transportation algorithm was developed early on when hand computations
were the norm and the shortcuts were warranted. Today, we have powerful computer codes that can solve a transportation model of any size as a regular Lp'4 Nevertheless, the transportation algorithm, aside from its historical significance, does provide insight into the use of the theoretical primal-dual relationships (introduced in Section 4.2) to achieve a practical end result, that of improving hand computations.
The exercise is theoretically intriguing.
The details of the algorithm are explained using the following numeric example.