Smart shipment: An efficient algorithm for packing three-dimensional bins

The 3D Bin Packing Problem is a well-known NP hard problem which aims at minimizing the number of bins for packing a given number of boxes. The tackled problem includes the case where boxes are allowed to be freely rotated and be placed in one of their six distinct phases, all for the purpose of utilizing the bin’s space. A number of algorithms have been proposed by various researchers in the hope of providing optimal or near-optimal solutions for the problem. This paper proposes a new algorithm that was implemented and successfully tested and have provided improved results compared to two previously published algorithms. A theoretical lower bound was also used for the purpose of validation and comparison. The time taken by the new algorithm to pack the boxes in the bins is very small (less than one minute) even for large instances of 100000 boxes. One of the major achievements of the proposed algorithm is the maximum utilization bins’ spaces.