Abstract
Several classes of multicommodity networks have been shown to have the property that they can be transformed to equivalent uncapacitated single commodity flow problems. We show that many of these networks can be further reduced to smaller, semi-capacitated flow problems using the inverse of a result of Ford and Fulkerson. This appears to be a useful computationally-oriented tool for developing practically efficient algorithms. These concepts are also used to establish a generalization of a previous result concerning multicommodity transportation problems.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
G.H. Bradley, G.G. Brown and G.W. Graves, “Design and implementation of large scale primal transshipment algorithms”,Management Science 24 (1977) 1–35.
G.H. Bradley, G.G. Brown and G.W. Graves, “GNET: A primal capacitated network program”, Copyright 1975.
J.R. Evans, “A combinatorial equivalence between a class of multicommodity flow problems and the capacitated transportation problem”,Mathematical Programming 10 (1976) 141–144.
J.R. Evans, “Some network flow models and heuristics for multiproduct production and inventory planning”,AIIE Transactions 9 (1977) 75–81.
J.R. Evans, “A single commodity transformation for certain multicommodity network flow problems”,Operations Research, to appear.
J.R. Evans, J.J. Jarvis and R.A. Duke, “Graphic matroids and the multicommodity transportation problem”,Mathematical Programming 13 (1977) 323–328.
L.R. Ford and D.R. Fulkerson,Flows in networks (Princeton University Press, N.J., 1963).
F. Glover, D. Karney and D. Klingman, “Implementation and computational study on start procedures and basis change criteria for a primal network code”,Networks 4 (1974) 191–212.
F. Glover and D. Klingman, “Capsule view of future developments on large scale network and network-related problems”, Research Report CCS 238, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX. (19775).
B. Lev, “A noniterative algorithm for tri-diagonal transportation problems and its generalization”,Operations Research 20 (1972) 109–125.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Evans, J.R. On equivalent representations of certain multicommodity networks as single commodity flow problems. Mathematical Programming 15, 92–99 (1978). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01609003
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01609003