An Efficient Algorithm for Solving Minimum Cost Flow Problem with Complementarity Slack Conditions

Abstract

This paper presents an algorithm for solving a minimum cost flow (MCF) problem with a dual approach. The algorithm holds the complementary slackness at each iteration and finds an augmenting path by updating node potential iteratively. Then, flow can be augmented at the original network. In contrast to other popular algorithms, the presented algorithm does not find a residual network, nor find a shortest path. Furthermore, our algorithm holds information of node potential at each iteration, and we update node potential within finite iterations for expanding the admissible network. The validity of our algorithm is given. Numerical experiments show that our algorithm is an efficient algorithm for the MCF problem, especially for the network with a small interval of cost of per unit flow.