Question

What is the difference between Assignment Problem and Transportation Problem?

Answer 1

Transportation Problem	Assignment Problem
It is used to optimize the transportation cost.	It is about assigning finite source to finite destination (one source is alloted to one destination).
Number of Source and demand may or may not be equal.	Number of source and number of destination must be equal.
If demand and supply are not equal, then transportation problem is known as Unbalanced Transportation Problem.	If number of rows and number of columns are not equal, then the assignment problem is known as Unbalanced Assignment Problem.
It requires to step to solve: Find Initial Solution using North West, Least Cost or Vogel Approximation Find Optimal Solution using MODI method.	It requires only one step to solve. Hungarian Method is sufficient to find the optimal solutions.

Answer 2

The assignment problem is a special case of the transportation problem. The differences are given below.

Transportation Problem	Assignment Problem
1. This is about reducing cost of transportation merchandise	1. This is about assigning finite sources to finite destinations where only one destination is allotted for one source with minimum cost
2. Number of sources and number of demand need not be equal	2. Number of sources and the number of destinations must be equal
3. If total demand and total supply are not equal then the problem is said to be unbalanced.	3. If the number of rows are not equal to the number of columns then problems are unbalanced.
4. It requires 2 stages to solve Getting initial basic feasible solution, by NWC, LCM, VAM and optimal solution by MODI method	4. It has only one stage. Hungarian method is sufficient for obtaining an optimal solution