Problem
Research questions and friction points this paper is trying to address.
bin packing
precedence constraints
exact solver
BPP-GP
PrecPack: An Efficient Open-Source Exact Solver for Bin Packing with Generalized Precedence Constraints
🤖 AI Summary
该研究解决了带广义优先约束的装箱问题，通过开发一种名为PrecPack的有效开源精确求解器，采用分支定界记忆法和根列生成技术。
📝 Abstract
Efficient resource use in packing and assembly-line applications requires decisions that jointly account for capacity and precedence constraints. The strongly NP-hard bin packing problem with generalized precedence constraints (BPP-GP) models such decisions by minimizing the number of ordered, capacitated bins required to pack weighted items, even when precedence requirements span multiple bins. Existing exact algorithms primarily focus on classical special cases, whereas general BPP-GP has been addressed only via compact integer models and heuristics, with no efficient open-source exact solver. We present PrecPack, a unified exact solver that extends branch-bound-and-remember (BBR) to arbitrary nonnegative precedence weights and naturally specializes to the classical cases. Generalized states capture restrictions that remain active across future bins, which are addressed through branching, dominance, and conflict-aware lower bounds. Root column generation uses fixed-point arithmetic to compute numerically valid dual bounds for pruning or to prove optimality. To support reuse and verification, we provide common programming and command-line interfaces, independent assignment checking, explicit termination statuses, and reproducible batch execution; the core procedures require no commercial software. In same-machine, single-threaded comparisons on classic assembly-line benchmarks, more instances are proven optimal, and average computing times are substantially reduced relative to leading source-available BBR implementations. Further comparisons with published benchmark results for bin packing with precedence constraints and BPP-GP also show that more instances were proved optimal and that reported average gaps were smaller on most benchmark sets. PrecPack is released under the MIT License at https://github.com/Sunkanghong-Wang/PrecPack.
Innovation
Methods, ideas, or system contributions that make the work stand out.
branch-bound-and-remember
generalized precedence constraints
root column generation
fixed-point arithmetic
open-source solver
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