An effective placement method for the single container loading problem

•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 so...

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Bibliographic Details
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
Online Access:Get full text
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Summary:•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.
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ISSN:0360-8352
1879-0550
DOI:10.1016/j.cie.2016.05.008