When the number of shipments in a feasible solution is less than the number of rows plus the number of columns minus one

A) the solution is optimal.
B) a dummy source must be created.
C) a dummy destination must be created.
D) there is degeneracy, and an artificial allocation must be created.
E) the closed path has a triangular shape.

When the number of shipments in a feasible solution is less than the number of rows plus the number of columns minus one, it indicates degeneracy in the transportation problem. To resolve this and proceed with the solution process, an artificial allocation (often of zero quantity) is created to satisfy the condition of having exactly m+n-1 allocations for a basic feasible solution, where m is the number of rows (sources) and n is the number of columns (destinations).