Answer to Question #170486 in Operations Research for Willy

Question

1)differentiate between assignment problem and transportation problem

2) What is a slack variable

Answer 1

1.

Assignment Problem is about assigning finite sources to finite destinations where only one destination is allotted for one source with minimum cost while Transportation Problem is about reducing cost of transportation merchandise.

2.

A slack variable is a variable that is added to an inequality constraint to transform it into an equality and it cannot take on negative values, as the simplex algorithm requires them to be positive or zero.