An effective placement method for the single container loading problem

• Published in: Computers & industrial engineering Vol. 97; pp. 212 - 221
• Main Authors: Huang, Yao-Huei, Hwang, F.J., Lu, Hao-Chun
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Elsevier Ltd 01.07.2016; Pergamon Press Inc
• Subjects: Boxes (containers); Container loading problem; Containers; Heuristic; Integer programming; Linear programming; Load; Loading operations; Loading placement; Logistics; Mixed integer; Mixed integer linear program; Optimization; Placement; Studies; Three dimensional; Loading placement; Container loading problem; Mixed integer linear program; Heuristic
• ISSN: 0360-8352; 1879-0550
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cie.2016.05.008

•The studied 3D container loading problem is formed as a mixed integer linear programming.•Due to the NP-hardness, we propose a simple but effective loading placement heuristic.•The experiments demonstrate that proposed heuristic outperforms reference methods.•The proposed heuristic is capable of solving large-scale instances efficiently. This study investigates a three-dimensional single container loading problem, which aims to pack a given set of unequal-size rectangular boxes into a single container such that the length of the occupied space in the container is minimized. Motivated by the practical logistics instances in literature, the problem under study is formulated as a zero-one mixed integer linear programming model. Due to the NP-hardness of the studied problem, a simple but effective loading placement heuristic is proposed for solving large-size instances. The experimental results demonstrate that the developed heuristic is capable of solving the instances with more than two hundred boxes and more efficient than the state-of-the-art mixed integer linear program and existing heuristic methods.