ASSIGNMENT PROBLEM (AP)
Assignment Problem
• Assignment Problem is a special case of transportation
problem in which the objective is to assign a number of
origins ( or persons) to the equal number of destinations
( or tasks).
• For Example; a departmental head may have four
persons available for assignment and four jobs to fill.
Then his interest to find the best assignment which will
be in the best interest of the department
• Let Cij be the cost if the ‘i’th person is assigned the ‘j’th job,
then the problem is to find an assignment ( which job
should be assigned to which person) so that the total cost
of performing all the jobs is minimum
• The Problems of this sort are known as Assignment
Problem
Mathematical Formulation of AP
The assignment problem can be stated in the form of n x n
matrix called Cost Effectiveness Matrix, where Cij is the
cost of assigning ith Person to the jth Job
Job
1 2 3 n
1 C11 C12 C13 C1n
Persons 2 C21 C22 C23 C2n
3 C31 C32 C33 C3n
m Cm1 Cm2 Cm3 Cmn
Method of Solving Assignment Problem
(Hungarian Method)
Steps Details
Step 1 Subtract the smallest element of each row, in the cost matrix,
from every element of that row
Step 2 Subtract the smallest element of each column, in the reduced
cost matrix, from every element of that column
Step 3 (a) Starting with row 1 of the matrix obtained, examine all rows having
exactly one zero element. Enclose this zero with in showing that
assignment is made there. Cross out all other zeros in the column ( in
which we mark ) to show that they cannot be used to make other
assignments. Proceed in this way until the last row is examined
Step 3 (b) Examine all columns with one unmarked zero. Mark at this row
and cross all zeros of the row in which is marked. Proceed in this
way until the last column is examined.
Step 3 (c) Continue these operations (a) and (b) successively until we reach
any of the following two situations
1) All the zeros are enclosed by or crossed
2) The remaining unmarked zeros lie at least two rows or columns
In case 1, we have a maximal assignment and in case 2, still we
have some zeros to be treated for which we use the trail and error
method. After above the operations, there arise two situations
1) It has an assignment in every row and every column so that we
got the solution
2) It doest not contain assignment in all rows and all columns
In the second situation the following procedure may be followed
Step 4 Draw the minimum number of horizontal and vertical lines
necessary to cover all zeros at least once. For this the following
method is adopted
Step 4 (a) Mark all rows for which assignment has not been made
Step 4 (b) Mark columns which have zeros in marked rows
Step 4 (c) Mark rows ( not already marked) which have assignment in
marked columns
Step 4 (d) Repeat Step 4a and 4c until the chain of marking ends
Step 4 (e) Draw lines through unmarked rows and through marked columns to
cover all the zeros. This procedure will help to draw the minimum
number of lines that pass through all zeros
Step 5 Select smallest of the elements that is not covered by lines. Subtract
it from all the elements that do not have a line through them, add it
to every element that lies at the intersection of two lines and leave
the remaining elements of the matrix unchanged
Step 6 Now re-apply the steps 3 to 5 to the modified matrix
