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Handbook of Combinatorial Optimization pp 151–207Cite as

Bin Packing Approximation Algorithms: Combinatorial Analysis

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Abstract

In the classical version of the bin packing problem one is given a list L = (a 1,...,a n ) of items (or elements) and an infinite supply of bins with capacity C. A function s(a i ) gives the size of item a i , and satisfies 0 < s(a i )≤C, 1 ≤ i ≤ n. The problem is to pack the items into a minimum number of bins under the constraint that the sum of the sizes of the items in each bin is no greater than C. In simpler terms, a set of numbers is to be partitioned into a minimum number of blocks subject to a sum constraint common to each block. We use the bin packing terminology, as it eases considerably the problem of describing and analyzing algorithms.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies, USA

    Edward G. Coffman Jr.

  2. Computer Science Department, Teacher’s Training College, Szeged, Hungary

    Gabor Galambos

  3. DEIS, University of Bologna, Italy

    Silvano Martello

  4. DEIS, University of Bologna, Italy

    Daniele Vigo

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  1. Edward G. Coffman Jr.
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  2. Gabor Galambos
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  3. Silvano Martello
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  4. Daniele Vigo
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Minnesota, USA

    Ding-Zhu Du

  2. Institute of Applied Mathematics, Academia Sinica, P. R. China

    Ding-Zhu Du

  3. Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, University of Florida, USA

    Panos M. Pardalos

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Coffman, E.G., Galambos, G., Martello, S., Vigo, D. (1999). Bin Packing Approximation Algorithms: Combinatorial Analysis. In: Du, DZ., Pardalos, P.M. (eds) Handbook of Combinatorial Optimization. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4757-3023-4_3

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