The Vogel Advanced – Start Method (VAM), named after W.R. Vogel ([R1]), implements the reduction of the minimum Tucker tableau of a transportation problem to minimum basic feasible form. This algorithm would hence correspond to the transportation of the Tucker tableau to canonical form and the subsequent application of steps (1) – (6) of the dual simplex algorithm of 4…2 We should remark here that VAM is not the only algorithm that implements this reduction. Other methods include, for example, the minimum – entry method and the northwest – corner method (see Exercise 6). In fact, the use of VAM in large transportation problems can be quite cumbersome. But VAM is usually considered to be superior for smaller transportation problems and is especially suitable for hand computation since it generally results in a feasible solution that is closer to being optimal than the other procedures.