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CMA Intermediate · Operations Management and Strategic Management · Transportation

In a transportation problem, the route from Source S2 to Destination D3 is blocked because of a flood-damaged bridge. The correct way to treat this prohibited route is to:

Assign the blocked route a very large cost, usually denoted M, so that the optimisation never allocates units to it. A zero or negative cost would make it attractive, and deleting the row would discard the source's valid routes.

  1. AAssign it a cost of zero
  2. BDelete the whole row of S2
  3. CAssign it a very large cost M so it is never chosenCorrect
  4. DAssign it a negative cost

Explanation

A prohibited route is given a prohibitively high cost M so the optimal solution avoids it. Zero or negative cost would make the route attractive. Deleting the row would wrongly remove the source's other routes.

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