Metaheurística tabu aplicada ao problema de carregamento de contêiner com caixas idênticas

Abstract

Intermodal transport, that is, the integration between different transport modes was facilitated by the use of containers. The stowage devices in the breakdown of the cargo is an important logistics activity, since the total volume actually used can affect significantly the cost of transporting the products. This approach addresses the Container Loading Problem, which more generally consists in arranging items (for example, products packaged in boxes) of various sizes within larger objects (for example, containers) with the maximum use of the available volume. In particular, it is considered the special case where the boxes to be arranged are rectangular and identical (single sized) and there is only a single container. In order to tackle these problems, the 2006´s Tabu Search heuristic by Pureza and Morabito, originally proposed for the Manufacturer s Pallet Loading Problem, was extended. From an initial solution generated by a block heuristic, moves are applied to selected blocks in order to change their box orientation and/or to expand them in one of the six directions, which result in the reduction, elimination and creation of other blocks. Criteria for stability of the load are also addressed in this work. Computational experiments using a set of instances in the literature demonstrate the performance of the proposed approach.