Fuzzy linear programming approach for solving transportation problems with interval-valued trapezoidal fuzzy numbers

Transportation problem (TP) is an important network structured linear programming problem that arises in several contexts and has deservedly received a great deal of attention in the literature. The central concept in this problem is to find the least total transportation cost of a commodity in order to satisfy demands at destinations using available supplies at origins in a crisp environment. In real life situations, the decision maker may not be sure about the precise values of the coefficients belonging to the transportation problem. The aim of this paper is to introduce a formulation of TP involving interval-valued trapezoidal fuzzy numbers for the transportation costs and values of supplies and demands. We propose a fuzzy linear programming approach for solving interval-valued trapezoidal fuzzy numbers transportation problem based on comparison of interval-valued fuzzy numbers by the help of signed distance ranking. To illustrate the proposed approach an application example is solved. It is demonstrated that study of interval-valued trapezoidal fuzzy numbers transportation problem gives rise to the same expected results as those obtained for TP with trapezoidal fuzzy numbers.