A reference length approach for the 3D strip packing problem

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

17 Scopus Citations
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Author(s)

  • Lijun Wei
  • Wee-Chong Oon
  • Wenbin Zhu
  • Andrew Lim

Related Research Unit(s)

Detail(s)

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)37-47
Journal / PublicationEuropean Journal of Operational Research
Volume220
Issue number1
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2012

Abstract

In the three-dimensional strip packing problem (3DSP), we are given a container with an open dimension and a set of rectangular cuboids (boxes) and the task is to orthogonally pack all the boxes into the container such that the magnitude of the open dimension is minimized. We propose a block building heuristic based on extreme points for this problem that uses a reference length to guide its solution. Our 3DSP approach employs this heuristic in a one-step lookahead tree search algorithm using an iterative construction strategy. We tested our approach on standard 3DSP benchmark test data; the results show that our approach produces better solutions on average than all other approaches in literature for the majority of these data sets using comparable computation time. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Research Area(s)

  • Best-fit heuristic, Combinatorial optimization, Greedy algorithm, Look-ahead, Packing, Tree search

Citation Format(s)

A reference length approach for the 3D strip packing problem. / Wei, Lijun; Oon, Wee-Chong; Zhu, Wenbin et al.
In: European Journal of Operational Research, Vol. 220, No. 1, 01.07.2012, p. 37-47.

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review