A priority based time minimization transportation problem

Abstract

This paper discusses a priority based time minimizing transporation problem in which destinations are prioritized so that the material is supplied, based upon the priorities of the destinations. All the destinations, which are at priority, are served first in Stage-I while the demands of the secondary destinations are met in Stage-II. It is assumed that secondary transportation can not take place until the primary transportation is done. The purpose is to transport in such a manner that the sum of the transportation time of primary and secondary destinations is minimum. To achieve this, two approaches are proposed. In the first approach, primary destinations are served optimally by giving weights while in the second approach, lexicographic optimization is used. From the generated pairs, the minimum sum of times corressponding to Stage-I and Stage-II times is picked up as the optimal solution. It is also shown, through Computational Details, that the lexicographic optimization converges to the optimal solution faster than the first approach as reported in Table 4.