GENPACK: KPI-Guided Multi-Criteria Genetic Algorithm for Industrial 3D Bin Packing

TL;DR

GENPACK introduces a KPI-guided genetic algorithm pipeline for industrial 3D bin packing, significantly improving space utilization and stability over existing methods while maintaining practical runtimes.

Contribution

It integrates KPIs into the fitness function, combining domain-specific heuristics with genetic algorithms for robust industrial 3D bin packing solutions.

Findings

Achieves up to 35% higher space utilization on real-world data

Improves surface support by 15-20% over baselines

Exhibits lower variance and stable performance across orders

Abstract

The three-dimensional bin packing problem (3D-BPP) is a longstanding challenge in operations research and logistics. While classical heuristics and constructive methods can generate packings efficiently, they often fail to satisfy industrial requirements such as stability, balance, and handling feasibility. Metaheuristics such as genetic algorithms (GAs) offer greater flexibility, but pure GA approaches frequently struggle with efficiency, parameter sensitivity, and scalability to industrial order sizes. These limitations are particularly evident at real-world pallet dimensions, where even state-of-the-art methods often fail to produce robust, deployable solutions. We propose a KPI-guided GA-based pipeline for industrial 3D-BPP that integrates key performance indicators (KPIs) directly into a scalarized fitness function. The method combines a layer-based chromosome representation, domain-specific operators, and constructive heuristics to balance efficiency and feasibility. On the BED-BPP benchmark of 1,500 real-world orders, our GENPACK pipeline consistently outperforms heuristic and learning-based baselines, achieving up to 35% higher space utilization and 15-20% stronger surface support, while exhibiting lower variance across orders. These gains come at a modest runtime cost but remain practical for batch-scale deployment, yielding stable, balanced, and space-efficient packings.