Classical Bin Packing Problem
Let us consider the classical bin packing problem first. The bin packing problem
is to pack a set of items into a number of bins such that the total capacity
does not exceed some maximum value.
Assume that we have i kinds of items, labelled from 1 to m. Each kind of
item i has a volume Vi, respectively. Of course, all volumes Vi are nonnegative.
Without loss of generality, we can also assume that the items are listed in
increasing order of volume in order to simplify the representation. Meanwhile,
we have j kinds of bins, labelled from 1 to n. Each kind of bin j has a capacity
Cj , respectively. Undoubtedly, all capacities Cj are nonnegative.
The most common formulation of the problem is the 0-1 bin packing problem,
which restricts the number xi of copies of each kind of item to zero or
one. Mathematically, the 0-1 bin packing problem can be formulated as the
following bin packing programming