APPLYING SPATIAL REPRESENTATION TECHNIQUES TO THE CONTAINER PACKING PROBLEM

This paper describes an efficient method of packing boxes into a conta iner using a unique spatial representation technique. Unlike other alg orithms, the packing algorithm in this paper is not constrained by the physical packing sequence, that is, back to front, or bottom to top. This extra flexibility allows the program to pack the boxes more effic iently. The packing plan can be generated to suit the actual packing s equence. The program is implemented on an IBM PC and a comparison has been made with a similar software. The results, in terms of packing ef ficiency and packing time, are promising.