Flexsim Model for packed items.

Hi,

Would like to enquire whether flexsim is adept to simulate for packing box and item?
Let me describe a little bit about the simulation.

Items or inventories are packed when these are shipped from Fulfillment center.Most of time these are packed in boxes.Suppose we have 20000 different products and and 40 different boxes size that are used to pack these 20000 items.
My goal is to determine the dimension(length,breadth and height) of these 40 boxes so that there would be minimum void in box when items are packed in boxes.
Yes 20000 items have different length,breadth and height.

Hi Kunal,

If you are familiar with SQL and know how to use it within the flexsim the size of the packed box can be controlled based on the dimensions of the items.You need to store the data(Length ,breadth and width) of packed boxes mostly in bundles or tables and then writing the query multiplying different columns along with using GROUP by ,ORDER by and HAVING clause to get the volume of packed box that comes close with the dimensions of the item.Later with the obtained return values you can change the dimensions of the packed box using setsize() command.There might be an another approach but this is only an idea.Here is the similar thread that will help you.
https://www.flexsim.com/community/fo...ead.php?t=2837

This is a classic bin packing problem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bin_packing_problem

The wikipedia article outlines a few of the possible algorithms for solving the problem - best fit decreasing and first fit decreasing. Searching around the Internet yields a few other algorithms, including next fit and worst fit (not sure why you'd want that one ).

If you need to include optimal bin packing as part of your simulation, you could code your selected bin packing algorithm into a FlexSim User Command or some other trigger location.

Here is a link to a discussion regarding 3D bin packing algorithms: http://programmers.stackexchange.com...items-shipping. SourceForge has several open source projects tackling the issue: http://sourceforge.net/directory/os:...=bin%20packing

Also, attached is a paper on the subject. Just do an Internet search for "3D bin packing algorithms" to get more resources.

If you just need the solution alone, and don't need to have it as part of a larger simulation, there are some commercial solutions out there. In the few I looked at, none were appropriate for integrating with a simulation running much faster than real time - you'd be better off coding an algorithm into FlexSim directly.