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Analysis of upper bounds for the pallet loading problem

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>2001
<mark>Journal</mark>European Journal of Operational Research
Issue number3
Volume132
Number of pages12
Pages (from-to)582-593
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

This paper is concerned with upper bounds for the well-known Pallet Loading Problem (PLP), which is the problem of packing identical boxes into a rectangular pallet so as to maximize the number of boxes fitted. After giving a comprehensive review of the known upper bounds in the literature, we conduct a detailed analysis to determine which bounds dominate which others. The result is a ranking of the bounds in a partial order. It turns out that two of the bounds dominate all others: a bound due to Nelissen and a bound obtained from the linear programming relaxation of a set packing formulation. Experiments show that the latter is almost always optimal and can be computed quickly.