Article ID: | iaor20084667 |
Country: | Brazil |
Volume: | 27 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 311 |
End Page Number: | 331 |
Publication Date: | May 2007 |
Journal: | Pesquisa Operacional |
Authors: | Armentano Vincius Amaral, Araujo O.C.B. |
Keywords: | containers, packing |
This paper deals with the container loading problem which involves the selection of a subset of boxes, each box with a given volume, such that they fit in a single container and maximize its volume utilization subject to orientation and stability constraints. We propose a multi-start random constructive heuristic with a load arrangement that is based on maximal cuboids that fit in given empty spaces. Each instance is adaptively evaluated by a set of criteria, and at each step of the construction process one maximal cuboid is chosen probabilistically from a restricted list of candidates. In order to enhance the flexibility in the construction of a solution, a probabilistic reduction on such cuboids is allowed. Computational tests on several instances from the literature show that the proposed method performs better than other approaches.