A reference length approach for the 3D strip packing problem

In the three-dimensional strip packing problem (3DSP), we are given a container with an open dimension and a set of rectangular cuboids (boxes) and the task is to orthogonally pack all the boxes into the container such that the magnitude of the open dimension is minimized. We propose a block building heuristic based on extreme points for this problem that uses a reference length to guide its solution. Our 3DSP approach employs this heuristic in a one-step lookahead tree search algorithm using an iterative construction strategy. We tested our approach on standard 3DSP benchmark test data; the results show that our approach produces better solutions on average than all other approaches in literature for the majority of these data sets using comparable computation time.

► We examine the three-dimensional strip packing problem. ► Devised a greedy reference length-based packing heuristic. ► Heuristic is embedded in a greedy one-step lookahead (G1LA) tree search. ► G1LA is called several times using different block lists and branching factors. ► Our approach outperforms existing approaches on benchmark test data.