A New Heuristic Algorithm for the 3D Bin Packing Problem

3D bin packing is a classical NP-hard (Nondeterministic Polynomial-time hard) problem where a set N of 3D boxes is to be packed in a minimum number of containers (bins). 3D bin packing is used in many industrial applications; hence computer scientists are challenged in designing practical and efficient approaches for the problem. This paper presents a new heuristic algorithm called Peak Filling Slice Push (PFSP) for 3D bin packing. The algorithm recursively divides the container into smaller slices and then fills each slice with boxes before pushing them to minimize the wasted space. Experimental results showed significant performance improvements over other current approaches.