An advanced macro spreadsheet program for the simplex method

Spreadsheets have evolved into sophisticated computation and presentation tools that are versatile, easy to use and accessible. This paper illustrates the power of macro spreadsheets by presenting an advanced macro program that finds the solution of linear programming problems using the simplex method. As an example, the transportation problem is solved with different numbers of origins and destinations. Taking advantage of some programming features of spreadsheets, the program uses an improved pivotal elimination subroutine to reduce the execution time drastically. The macro program is described and computational results based on some examples are given.