In this paper, we propose a simple and fast branching method
for solving small scale fixed-charge transportation problem. The
algorithm has two novelties. First, branching can start from the
‘‘heavy loaded’’ locations therefore convergence may be accelerated.
In our example, more than one fixed charge can be extracted
at the same time, which allows for solving a 3 × 3 problem in one
iteration. If the first iteration does not converge to an optimal solution,
another ‘‘heavy loaded’’ location can be selected and the resulting
calculation is still faster than a regular branching method.
Secondly, if one of the demands or supplies is equal to the minimum
load, then we can subtract the minimum element from given
row or column, or break the problem into a series of reduced problems.
The sub problems can be further broken into smaller sub
problems until an optimal solution is obtained.