Philippine E-Journals

A Heuristic Approach for the Retail Distributor's Pallet Loading problem of three-dimensional mixed Rectangular Box Sizes Incorporating Load Stability and Product Fragility

Dennis E. Cruz

Discipline: Engineering, Technology

 

Abstract:

Pallet loading problem for retail companies is made complicated by the presence of varying shapes and dimensions of the boxes to be loaded. Hence, it could result to unstable stacking. Load stability is an important factor to consider in pallet loading. A less stable stacking can damage the product during transportation that eventually leads to rejection of delivery.

Past researches on the mathematical models dealing on pallet loading are classified as NP-Hard. As you increase the number of candidate boxes for loading or changing the dimensions of the boxes, the computation time will significantly increase. These include the research done by Cruz, Pascual, Sy and Tan (2004). They suggested a mathematical model on pallet loading problem for 3-dimensional mixed rectangular box sizes that incorporates load stability and product fragility. Thus, some authors proposed heuristic to solve pallet loading problem

This study is primarily concerned with the development of heuristic for the mathematical model formulated by Cruz et al. (2004). The validation of the heuristic was done using a worst case scenario wherein boxes have varying dimensions.