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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.
Something the summariser seems to have missed.. This kind of problem comes up in a lot of different places.
One example would be brain tumor treatment using lasers.
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.
This coffee tastes funny.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
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.
I know many of you despise Amazon due to the one-click fiasco (and with good reason). But packing/packaging are one area where they're trying to get things right. When possible, order items that are packed using "frustration-free" packaging.
Fortunately, few reach this level of "mastery": http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/18/hp_packaging/
UPS has gotten itself a lot of press over the years about how it has saved fuel, time, and money with its routing algorithms. There was recently an article in Information Week about some of their technology. It is amazing how even a small improvement can save big money AND positively impact the environment. Routing improvements save time and money. Better vehicle maintenance plans. Less idling. This is the printable article. It has a session Id so I don't know if it will survive. http://www.informationweek.com/shared /printableArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=34SPUBGP0QJA2QSNDLRSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=212900815
This is the link with ads.
http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=212900815
When I worked for UPS in school, they used manual labor to load the trailers they used to send packages to the next facility. Loaders used their eyes, brains, and some basic tips to pack the trailer as tight as possible while using totally random sized packages. If you did well, you were rewarded; if you didn't, you were...not.
These guys would be well advised to watch how those trailers are loaded to figure out what algorithm the loader is using internally - we could get those trailers packed pretty damned tight.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
We're getting there... search for "great pacific garbage patch": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pacific_Garbage_Patch
No sig today...
I work for a company that produces paper products. A large part of what we do is die cut the sheets into different shapes. We charge our customers for these shapes according to how many we get out of a sheet.
Sometimes the shapes are square/rectangular, which nest next to each other very well. Generally, they do not. Among other things, I am tasked with figuring out how many shapes we can get out of a sheet of paper. With the irregular shapes, the best method I've found is just to brute force the problem, trying various layouts to see if orienting the shapes one way will get us one or two more shapes out of a sheet. It's not a simple area problem, since some shapes nest very well, and some don't. I do have tricks I've learned to help speed the process, but I'd love to have something like this software, which would take the one-up shape, and tell me how many I can get out of a sheet of paper.
I got married last year and we registered for a lot of stuff from Crate & Barrel. Everything came packed in a ridiculous amount of packaging, but my favorite was the pillows. Each of the four pillows we got came double-wrapped in bubble paper! I guess they weren't broken when we got them, so it must have worked. ;)
Sad or not, i hope it happens fast because as soon as there is enough garbage that i can stand on it, i'm claiming it as my own nation. "I claim this floating island of crap in the name of Garbageland! All hail for i am the king of Garbageland!"
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