Three Dimensional Packing Algorithm with Consideration of Loading and Unloading Order

Abstract

A novel packing problem for truck or containership transportation is considered. A truck or a ship visits several accumulation places in a delivery tour, and items are loaded or unloaded at each accumulation place. In order to carry items as many as possible at one delivery tour, we often have to unpack and repack some items even at nondestination places if they blockade loading other items. Such packing and repacking, however, will make the transportation cost increase. Thus, a packing that requirs smaller number of unpacking and repacking is desired. In this paper, we extend the slicing-tree which is a method of a representation of packing and propose an algorithm to pack items into the container with minimum the number of unpacking and re-packing.