On a class of capacitated transshipment problems with bounds on rim conditions (Q1635449)

Summary: The transshipment technique is used to find the shortest route from one point in a network to another point and is useful to truncate the cost of transportation. Inspired by dead mileage problem evaluated in terms of running empty buses from various depots to starting points, in this paper we study capacitated transshipment problems with bounds on total availabilities at sources and total destination requirements. Sometimes because of the budget/political constraints, the total flow of transportation is stipulated by some external decision maker which thereby results in impaired or enhanced flow in the market. This motivated us to explore such problems as a particular case of the original problem. The optimal solution of the specified problem is obtained by transforming it into an equivalent capacitated transportation problem. We have also discussed various situations emerging out of unbalanced capacitated transshipment problems in the form of inequalities and numerical examples are also given to illustrate the theory.