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Simple but effective heuristics for the 2-constraint bin packing problem

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Abstract

The 2-constraint bin packing problem consists in packing a given number of items, each one characterised by two different but not related dimensions, into the minimum number of bins in such a way to do not exceed the capacity of the bins in either dimension. The development of the heuristics for this problem is challenged by the need of a proper definition of the criterion for evaluating the feasibility of the two capacity constraints on the two different dimensions. In this paper, we propose a computational evaluation of several criteria, and two simple but effective algorithms—a greedy and neighbourhood search algorithms—for solving the 2-constraint bin packing problem. An extensive computational analysis supports our main claim.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would thank the students Gianluca Bortignon and Federico Iannicelli for running part of the computational tests.

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Correspondence to Roberto Aringhieri.

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Aringhieri, R., Duma, D., Grosso, A. et al. Simple but effective heuristics for the 2-constraint bin packing problem. J Heuristics 24, 345–357 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-017-9326-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10732-017-9326-0

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