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Packing Algorithms May Save the Planet
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports on how competitions to devise better packing algorithms could help cut the environmental impact of deliveries and shipping. A new record setter at packing differently-sized discs into the smallest space without overlapping them has potential to be applied to real world 3D problems, researchers claim." Ok the title might be a little ridiculous, but the ridiculous packaging used to ship a few tiny objects by some shippers is pretty shameful.
Who needs padding anyway? We'll just make more when it is killed in shipping...
I find the development of new algorithms interesting in itself, and I suspect that superior packing algorithms will have a number of interesting applications; but I wonder if they'll actually have much effect on shippers in the nearish term.
A great deal of heterogenous object packing is done by humans, since the scale required to make packing assorted objects by machine is quite large(even places with automated warehouses often have a human do the packing at the end; because humans are really quite versatile object manipulators), and humans are actually pretty good at object packing. Not perfect; but quite good.
I'd suspect that inefficient packing has less to do with packing being hard, and more to do with the desire to standardize on a limited number of box sizes, to ease inventory management, which is a quite different problem.
Does HP really need an algorithm to tell them not to ship fifteen single sheets of paper in fifteen 9"x12"x2" cardboard boxes?
They need an algorithm that prevents them from hiring dummies in their shipping department.
Something the summariser seems to have missed.. This kind of problem comes up in a lot of different places.
Another thing that is forgotten... When a process can be optimized, it normally results in price-cuts which result in heavier use of the process. In the end more resources are used than before the optimization, opposite to the original intent.
Online retailers offering this service only makes sense. With items sitting in a warehouse and never being viewed by the customer prior to purchase, there isn't a need for fancy packaging that shows off the product and tries to prevent theft.
I know when I bought gifts for people (or their kids), they found it a great relief that they didn't have to spend time chopping through a clamshell and cutting/unwinding wire ties in a dozen different places just to get the product out of the packaging.
The fact that it saves on the amount of trash generated by the packaging for the product is icing on the cake!
It is just unfortunate that this kind of idea is next to impossible to have done in physical stores. While the idea of a display item doing the advertising and the real product being sold in plain boxes sounds like it would work, it becomes very hard to embellish on your product without outside packing.
I traded all my mod points for these magic beans.
If you really want to help cut the costs of shipping, stop importing water from the other side of the planet when the stuff that comes out of your tap is perfectly drinkable.
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Beleive it or not, overseas shipping containers are typically smaller than domestic shipping containers. Why? Cell guides on ships make it more efficient to use as few sizes as possible as to never have empty slots on the ships due to size issues. Also, the prongs on the tophandlers & cranes are positioned at set points, and making the containers longer requires costly structural improvements that outweigh the benefits. Most trucks you see on roads are 53' where ships typically carry 20's and 40's, with a few 45's. Keep in mind this may be different in areas near the coasts or denser countries (I'm in the US).
Also, overseas shipping containers are much much heavier than domestic ones because they have to be picked up from the top & withstand constant movement and stacking, where domestics are on a truck 99% of the time and are designed to never be lifted. As info, all of the grocry store & wall-mart containers you see with the big pretty advertisements on the side never go overseas, they are loaded at distribution centers near the coast that receive the shipping containers. The steel-ribbed ugly containers are the ones that go overseas.
Yes, there are inneficiencies to standardized shipping, but it removes more inefficiencies than it creates. Thats how the costs go down.