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Bidirectional best-fit heuristic for orthogonal rectangular strip packing

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Abstract

In a non-guillotinable rectangular strip packing problem (RF-SPP), the best orthogonal placement of given rectangular pieces on a strip of stock sheet having fixed width and infinite height are searched. The aim is to minimize the height of the strip while including all the pieces in appropriate orientations. In this study, a novel bidirectional best-fit heuristic (BBF) is introduced for solving RF-SPPs. The proposed heuristic as a new feature considers the gaps in both horizontal and vertical directions during the placement process. The performance of BBF is compared to some previous approaches, including one of the best heuristics from the literature. BBF achieves better results than the existing heuristics and delivers a better or matching performance as compared to the most of the previously proposed meta-heuristics for solving RF-SPPs.

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Abbreviations

BBF:

bidirectional best-fit heuristic

SPP:

rectangular strip packing problem

RF:

non-guillotinable, variable orientation subtype

RF-SPP:

non-guillotinable, variable orientation (orthogonal) SPP

GA:

genetic algorithm

SA:

simulated annealing

GRASP:

greedy randomized adaptive search procedure

BF:

best fit heuristic

BL:

bottom left heuristic

iBL:

improved bottom left heuristic

BLF:

bottom left fill heuristic

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Engineering, Yeditepe University, İnönü Cad. Kayışdağı Mah., 34755, Kadıköy/İstanbul, Turkey

    Önder Barış Aşık

  2. ASAP Research Group, School of Computer Science, University of Nottingham, Jubilee Campus, Wollaton Road, Nottingham, NG8 1BB, UK

    Ender Özcan

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  1. Önder Barış Aşık
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  2. Ender Özcan
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Aşık, Ö.B., Özcan, E. Bidirectional best-fit heuristic for orthogonal rectangular strip packing. Ann Oper Res 172, 405–427 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-009-0642-0

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