A PRACTICAL SOLUTION TO A CARGO LOADING PROBLEM AT BETHLEHEM STEEL

The optimum assignment of structural steel shapes to rail cars is an i mportant logistical problem in the steel industry. In this paper, we d iscuss an application at Bethlehem Steel that not only involves weight and dimensional constraints, but also customer unloading constraints. The formulation is a generalized bin packing problem which is solved by modifying and extending the first fit decreasing algorithm. The sol ution algorithm, SOLID (for Structural Optimal Loading IDentification) , has been used extensively for one of Bethlehem's high tonnage custom ers providing very good practical (implementable) results that achieve the desired goals. Bethlehem has enhanced this approach for use with other customers.