An evolutionary approach for the multiple container loading problem

In this paper, an optimal loading in multiple containers is considered. An evolutionary approach is proposed by using genetic algorithm and heuristic procedure. The proposed approach gives a loading sequence of packages and a selection sequence of containers to utilize the multiple containers effectively. The genetic algorithm determines the sequence of packages and containers as a pair. Therefore, this approach gives best sequence to determine the loading result. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is compared with other meta-heuristic methods, such as local search and simulated annealing. The result shows that the present approach is superior to other methods.