Fast heuristic algorithms to solve a single-stage Fixed-Charge Transportation Problem

The Fixed-Charge Transportation Problem (FCTP) is an extension of the classical transportation problem. It considers a fixed charge (or a fixed cost) and a transportation cost per unit transported associated with each route. The presence of the fixed cost in the objective function makes the problem difficult to solve, thereby requiring the use of heuristic methods. In this paper, simple heuristic algorithms are proposed, and their performances are compared with the existing best method by making use of benchmark problem instances.