I saw several methods that available to obtain an initial basic feasible solution of a transportation problem.
Method:1 North-West Corner Rule(NWC),
Method:2 Least Cost Method (LCM),
Method:3 Vogel’s Approximation Method(VAM)
etc,....
Why do we have so many methods? Why we need initial feasible solution? I mean , why not using Simplex method? After gaining one feasible solution, then we do what?