Development of a stochastic optimisation tool for solving the multiple container packing problems

The experimental results were analysed using the general linear model form of analysis of variance to identify appropriate algorithm configuration and parameter settings. It was found that each algorithm's parameters were statistically significant with a 95% confidence interval. The best configurations were then used in a sequential experiment that compared the performance of the AIS, PSO and GA algorithms for solving 21 heterogeneous MCPP. It was found that the average best-so-far solutions obtained from AIS were marginally better than those produced by GA and PSO for all problem sizes but AIS required longer computational time than GA.