An online packing heuristic for the three-dimensional container loading problem in dynamic environments and the physical internet

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the online three-dimensional container loading problem. We develop a novel online packing algorithm to solve the three-dimensional bin packing problem in the online case where items are not known well in advance and they have to be packed in real-time when they arrive. This is relevant in many real-world scenarios such as automated cargo loading in warehouses. This is also relevant in the new logistics model of Physical Internet. The effectiveness of the online packing heuristic is evaluated on a set of generated data. The experimental results show that the algorithm could solve the 3D container loading problems in online fashion and is com- petitive against other algorithms both in the terms of running time, space utilization and the number of bins.