The procurement of transportation services via large-scale combinatorial auctions involves a couple of complex decisions whose outcome highly influences the performance of the tender process. This paper examines the shipper's task of selecting a subset of the submitted bids which efficiently...

In this paper, we extend the vehicle routing problem with clustered backhauls (VRPCB) to an integrated routing and three-dimensional loading problem, called VRPCB with 3D loading constraints (3L-VRPCB). In the VRPCB each customer is either a linehaul or a backhaul customer and in each route all...

In the container pre-marshalling problem (CPMP) n items are given that belong to G different item groups (g=1,…,G) and that are piled up in up to S stacks with a maximum stack height H. A move can shift one item from one stack to another one. A sequence of moves of minimum length has to be...

Container loading is a pivotal function for operating supply chains efficiently. Underperformance results in unnecessary costs (e.g. cost of additional containers to be shipped) and in an unsatisfactory customer service (e.g. violation of deadlines agreed to or set by clients). Thus, it is not...

In the rectangle packing area minimization problem (RPAMP) we are given a set of rectangles with known dimensions. We have to determine an arrangement of all rectangles, without overlapping, inside an enveloping rectangle of minimum area. The paper presents a generic approach for solving the...

Container loading is a pivotal function for operating supply chains efficiently. Underperformance results in unnecessary costs (e.g. cost of additional containers to be shipped) and in an unsatisfactory customer service (e.g. violation of deadlines agreed to or set by clients). Thus, it is not...

Given a finite set of spheres of different sizes, we study the three-dimensional Strip Packing Problem (3D-SPP) as well as the three-dimensional Knapsack Problem (3D-KP). The 3D-SPP asks for a placement of all spheres within a cuboidal strip of fixed width and height so that the variable length...