On optimal design methods for steel product pallets

Loading steel coil products on a specialized packing case called pallet can be represented as a bin–packing problem with the special constraint where objects should be loaded on designated positions of bins. In this paper, under assuming that there exist only two types of objects, we focus on finding the optimum number of positions in a bin which minimizes the number of bins needed for packing a collection of objects. Firstly, we propose a method to decide the number of positions and prove that the method is optimum. Finally, for the packing problem using bins designed by the method, we show that the well–known algorithm, First–Fit Decreasing (FFD), is the optimum algorithm.