A note on an L-approach for solving the manufacturer's pallet loading problem

Abstract

An L-approach for packing (l, w)-rectangles into an (L, W)-rectangle was introduced in an earlier work by Lins, Lins and Morabito. They conjecture that the L-approach is exact and point out its runtime requirements as the main drawback. In this note it is shown that, by simply using a different data structure, the runtime is considerably reduced in spite of larger (but affordable) memory requirements. This reduction is important for practical purposes since it makes the algorithm much more acceptable for supporting actual decisions in pallet loading. Intensive numerical experiments showing the efficiency and effectiveness of the algorithm are presented.

Keywords:

• cutting and packing
• pallet and container loading
• recursive algorithm
• implementation

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous referee for his/her useful comments. EGB was Sponsored by FAPESP (Grants 01/04597-4, 02/00094-0 and 03/09196-6), CNPq (Grant 302266/2002-0) and Pronex. RM was sponsored by FAPESP (Grant 01/2972-2) and CNPq (Grant 522973/95-7). While FHN was sponsored by FAPESP (Grant 03/00460-0).