The special structure of the transportation problem allows securing a nonartificial starting basic solution using one of three methods
1. Northwest-corner method
2. Least-cost method
3. Vogel approximation method
The three methods differ in the "quality" of the starting basic solution they produce, in the sense that a better starting solution yields a smaller objective value. In general, though not always, the Vogel method yields the best starting basic solution, and the northwest-corner method yields the worst. The tradeoff is that the northwest-corner method involves the least amount of computations.