What is artificial variable in operation research?

What is artificial variable in operation research? These variables are fictitious and cannot have any physical meaning. The artificial variable technique is a device to get the starting basic feasible solution, so that simplex procedure may be adopted as usual until the optimal solution is obtained.

These variables are fictitious and cannot have any physical meaning. The artificial variable technique is a device to get the starting basic feasible solution, so that simplex procedure may be adopted as usual until the optimal solution is obtained.