Minimizing transportation costs: An efficient and effective approach for the spreadsheet user

Logistics problems often involve attempting to minimise the total costs of transporting materials from a number of sources to a variety of destinations. Sophisticated computer packages have been developed to help with this but the packages are normally only used by large organisations. Smaller organisations still, largely, depend on 'rule of thumb' methods. The article argues that the power of modern spreadsheet software, such as Microsoft 'Excel' allows all organisations to use a personal computer to produce optimal transportation allocations quickly and easily. This is demonstrated using a simple, worked example.