An efficient intelligent search algorithm for the two-dimensional rectangular strip packing problem

In this paper, we present an efficient intelligent search algorithm for the two-dimensional rectangular strip packing problem. This algorithm involves three stages, namely greedy selection, local improvement, and randomized improvement. The greedy selection stage provides a good initial solution for the local improvement stage, which then tries to improve the solution by a deterministic local search. The randomized improvement stage employs a simple randomized local search process, which does not need any control parameter. Each of these three stages uses a heuristic approach to construct solutions based on an improved scoring rule and the least-waste-first strategy. Extensive experiments show that, to the best of our knowledge, our proposed algorithm performs slightly better than all previously published metaheuristics for most of the benchmark instances.