The Overflowing Bin Packing Problem: Theoretical Results and a New Flow Formulation

We consider a recently proposed one-dimensional packing problem, called the overflowing bin packing problem (OBPP). In this scenario, we are given a set of items (of known sizes) and a set of bins (of known capacities). Roughly speaking, the task is to assign the items to the bins in such a way that the total … Read more

Mathematical models and decomposition methods for the two-bar charts packing problem

We consider the two-bar charts packing (2-BCPP), a recent combinatorial optimization problem whose aim is to pack a set of one-dimensional items into the minimum number of bins. As opposed to the well-known bin packing problem, pairs of items are grouped to form bar charts, and a solution is only feasible if the first and … Read more

Robust Concave Utility Maximization over Chance Constraints

This paper first studies an expected utility problem with chance constraints and incomplete information on a decision maker’s utility function. The model maximizes the worst-case expected utility of random outcome over a set of concave functions within a novel ambiguity set, while the underlying probability distribution is known. To obtain computationally tractable formulations, we employ … Read more

Chance-Constrained Bin Packing Problem with an Application to Operating Room Planning

We study the chance-constrained bin packing problem, with an application to hospital operating room planning. The bin packing problem allocates items of random size that follow a discrete distribution to a set of bins with limited capacity, while minimizing the total cost. The bin capacity constraints are satisfied with a given probability. We investigate a … Read more

Bin Packing Problem with Time Dimension: An Application in Cloud Computing

Improving energy efficiency and lowering operational costs are the main challenges faced in systems with multiple servers. One prevalent objective in such systems is to minimize the number of servers required to process a given set of tasks under server capacity constraints. This objective leads to the well-known bin packing problem. In this study, we … Read more

Enhanced Pseudo-Polynomial Formulations for Bin Packing and Cutting Stock Problems

We study pseudo-polynomial formulations for the classical bin packing and cutting stock problems. We first propose an overview of dominance and equivalence relations among the main pattern-based and pseudo-polynomial formulations from the literature. We then introduce reflect, a new formulation that uses just half of the bin capacity to model an instance and needs significantly … Read more

Bin Packing and Related Problems: General Arc-flow Formulation with Graph Compression

We present an exact method, based on an arc-flow formulation with side constraints, for solving bin packing and cutting stock problems — including multi-constraint variants — by simply representing all the patterns in a very compact graph. Our method includes a graph compression algorithm that usually reduces the size of the underlying graph substantially without … Read more

Solving Bin Packing Related Problems Using an Arc Flow Formulation

We present a new method for solving bin packing problems, including two-constraint variants, based on an arc flow formulation with side constraints. Conventional formulations for bin packing problems are usually highly symmetric and provide very weak lower bounds. The arc flow formulation proposed provides a very strong lower bound, and is able to break symmetry … Read more

A biased random-key genetic algorithm for a 2D and 3D bin packing problem

We present a novel multi-population biased random-key genetic algorithm (BRKGA) for the 2D and 3D bin packing problem. The approach uses a maximal-space representation to manage the free spaces in the bins. The proposed algorithm uses a decoder based on a novel placement procedure within a multi-population genetic algorithm based on random keys. The BRKGA … Read more

A hybrid bin-packing heuristic to multiprocessor scheduling

The multiprocessor scheduling problem consists in scheduling a set of tasks with known processing times into a set of identical processors so as to minimize their makespan, i.e., the maximum processing time over all processors. We propose a new heuristic for solving the multiprocessor scheduling problem, based on a hybrid heuristic to the bin packing … Read more