Single-Sink Fixed-Charge Transportation: Applications and Exact Solution Algorithms

The single-sink fixed-charge transportation problem (SSFCTP) consists in finding a minimum cost flow from a number of supplier nodes to a single demand node. Shipping costs comprise costs proportional to the amount shipped as well as a fixed charge. Although the SSFCTP is an important special case of the well known fixed-charge transportation problem, only a few methods for solving this problem have been proposed in the literature. This paper first summarizes applications of the single-sink fixed charge transportation problem in the fields of purchasing, manufacturing, and transportation. Exact solution methods based on dynamic programming and implicit enumeration are afterwards discussed and improved by means of problem reduction techniques and additional bounds. Finally, the performance of the various solution methods is compared in a series of computational experiments.