Efficient lower bounds and heuristics for the variable cost and size bin packing problem

We consider the variable cost and size bin packing problem, a generalization of the well-known bin packing problem, where a set of items must be packed into a set of heterogeneous bins characterized by possibly different volumes and fixed selection costs. The objective of the problem is to select bins to pack all items at minimum total bin-selection cost. The paper introduces lower bounds and heuristics for the problem, the latter integrating lower and upper bound techniques. Extensive numerical tests conducted on instances with up to 1000 items show the effectiveness of these methods in terms of computational effort and solution quality. We also provide a systematic numerical analysis of the impact on solution quality of the bin selection costs and the correlations between these and the bin volumes. The results show that these correlations matter and that solution methods that are un-biased toward particular correlation values perform better. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.