Solving the generalized transportation problem

This paper advocates a mathematical programming approach for solving the classical transportation problem generalized to include non-linear demand and supply functions and non-linear transport costs. Such an approach is made possible by the recent public availability of a powerful optimizing system called MINOS, assembled for the solution of large programming problems for which the constraint set is linear and spatial. Primal and dual program formulations for this generalized transportation problem are set out in the paper, and brief computational experience with the software system in solving several illustrative problems is recorded.