Packing Algorithms May Save the Planet 195
An anonymous reader writes "New Scientist reports on how competitions to devise better packing algorithms could help cut the environmental impact of deliveries and shipping. A new record setter at packing differently-sized discs into the smallest space without overlapping them has potential to be applied to real world 3D problems, researchers claim." Ok the title might be a little ridiculous, but the ridiculous packaging used to ship a few tiny objects by some shippers is pretty shameful.
Or course we should pack things tightly... (Score:4, Insightful)
Who needs padding anyway? We'll just make more when it is killed in shipping...
Are algorithms the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
A great deal of heterogenous object packing is done by humans, since the scale required to make packing assorted objects by machine is quite large(even places with automated warehouses often have a human do the packing at the end; because humans are really quite versatile object manipulators), and humans are actually pretty good at object packing. Not perfect; but quite good.
I'd suspect that inefficient packing has less to do with packing being hard, and more to do with the desire to standardize on a limited number of box sizes, to ease inventory management, which is a quite different problem.
Obvious (Score:5, Insightful)
Does HP really need an algorithm to tell them not to ship fifteen single sheets of paper in fifteen 9"x12"x2" cardboard boxes?
They need an algorithm that prevents them from hiring dummies in their shipping department.
Saving on delivery or pickup. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Packing algorithms don't just apply to shipping (Score:5, Insightful)
Something the summariser seems to have missed.. This kind of problem comes up in a lot of different places.
Another thing that is forgotten... When a process can be optimized, it normally results in price-cuts which result in heavier use of the process. In the end more resources are used than before the optimization, opposite to the original intent.
Re:Saving on delivery or pickup. (Score:2, Insightful)
You assume everybody has the same type of garbage pickup as you do. In some places, an actual man hangs on the back of the truck and goes from one side of the street to the other collecting the garbage and tipping it into the scoop. One trip down the street. And then some places have letter carriers deliver mail ON FOOT going from one house to another. Yes, things are done differently than what you are familiar with.
Re:Are algorithms the issue? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Support Amazon (Score:3, Insightful)
Online retailers offering this service only makes sense. With items sitting in a warehouse and never being viewed by the customer prior to purchase, there isn't a need for fancy packaging that shows off the product and tries to prevent theft.
I know when I bought gifts for people (or their kids), they found it a great relief that they didn't have to spend time chopping through a clamshell and cutting/unwinding wire ties in a dozen different places just to get the product out of the packaging.
The fact that it saves on the amount of trash generated by the packaging for the product is icing on the cake!
It is just unfortunate that this kind of idea is next to impossible to have done in physical stores. While the idea of a display item doing the advertising and the real product being sold in plain boxes sounds like it would work, it becomes very hard to embellish on your product without outside packing.
Re:Are algorithms the issue? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Are algorithms the issue? (Score:5, Insightful)
So they're not practical to solve--in other words, practically impossible.
That would be a case of *literally* impossible to solve. Which means that they're practically impossible as well, of course.
George said it best... (Score:3, Insightful)
We're so self-important. So self-important. Everybody's going to save something now. "Save the trees, save the bees, save the whales, save those snails." And the greatest arrogance of all: save the planet. What? Are these fucking people kidding me? Save the planet, we don't even know how to take care of ourselves yet. We haven't learned how to care for one another, we're gonna save the fucking planet?
I'm getting tired of that shit. Tired of that shit. I'm tired of fucking Earth Day, I'm tired of these self-righteous environmentalists, these white, bourgeois liberals who think the only thing wrong with this country is there aren't enough bicycle paths. People trying to make the world safe for their Volvos. Besides, environmentalists don't give a shit about the planet. They don't care about the planet. Not in the abstract they don't. Not in the abstract they don't. You know what they're interested in? A clean place to live. Their own habitat. They're worried that some day in the future, they might be personally inconvenienced. Narrow, unenlightened self-interest doesn't impress me.
Besides, there is nothing wrong with the planet. Nothing wrong with the planet. The planet is fine. The PEOPLE are fucked. Difference. Difference. The planet is fine. Compared to the people, the planet is doing great. Been here four and a half billion years. Did you ever think about the arithmetic? The planet has been here four and a half billion years. We've been here, what, a hundred thousand? Maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus four and a half billion. And we have the CONCEIT to think that somehow we're a threat? That somehow we're gonna put in jeopardy this beautiful little blue-green ball that's just a-floatin' around the sun?
The planet has been through a lot worse than us. Been through all kinds of things worse than us. Been through earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic storms, the magnetic reversal of the poles...hundreds of thousands of years of bombardment by comets and asteroids and meteors, worlwide floods, tidal waves, worldwide fires, erosion, cosmic rays, recurring ice ages...And we think some plastic bags, and some aluminum cans are going to make a difference? The planet...the planet...the planet isn't going anywhere. WE ARE!
We're going away. Pack your shit, folks. We're going away. And we won't leave much of a trace, either. Thank God for that. Maybe a little styrofoam. Maybe. A little styrofoam. The planet'll be here and we'll be long gone. Just another failed mutation. Just another closed-end biological mistake. An evolutionary cul-de-sac. The planet'll shake us off like a bad case of fleas. A surface nuisance. --George Carlin
Save the planet (Score:4, Insightful)
Jevons Paradox, anyone? (Score:3, Insightful)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox [wikipedia.org]
"In economics, the Jevons Paradox (sometimes called the Jevons effect) is the proposition that technological progress that increases the efficiency with which a resource is used, tends to increase (rather than decrease) the rate of consumption of that resource."
Re:Support Amazon (Score:3, Insightful)
The products come from the manufacturer in a less packed box--meaning less twistys, blister packing, plastic bags, etc. There is no unpacker involved anywhere in the scheme. The box is also optimized to be shipped individually more so than the standard box, and will actually provide better protection for the customer.
Re:Or course we should pack things tightly... (Score:3, Insightful)
Consider the $90 Limited Edition video game in the metal case that gets thrown in either a padded bag or a mostly empty box with a few sheet of advertising flash and a partially-inflated bag. By the time it reaches my hands it's a goddamn miracle if it doesn't have any dents or scratches.
Re:Real life tetris? (Score:3, Insightful)
Sounds almost like a real-life game of tetris. In 3d. ;)
Who says videogames don't teach useful skills.
Re:Packing algorithms don't just apply to shipping (Score:2, Insightful)
This idea has been around since the 80s. Had a prof who had these sorts of algs done and written (smart dude).
What he found was YES you can geometrically pack everything perfectly to have the optimal load. There was a HEAVY cost and not in computing terms. The cost was getting people to pack it like that. Think crazy 3d jigsaw puzzle.
Truck dudes do not want to spend 8 hours loading a truck. They want it done in minutes. To load a truck means you either have to have a loader whos job it is to do this. Or have the driver do it. This job then needs to be done on both ends.
Many times they show up and the load is not even ready. Much less packed up.
Also many of these dudes do not run a 'full' load. They keep extra space to run extra when the need arises (which it does a lot). So do you repack when the new package shows up? Oh the one you need for stop 10 is buried bellow stop 9 and 8 and you skipped those because the schedule is screwed up again and those are not ready for you as you have been telling the dispatcher for 2 weeks now.
This works in the simplest of cases. Large FULL load from point A to point B. No extra stops.
Also keep in mind many of these companies have been doing this for YEARS. They have a 'natural' 'homegrown' idea how to do this.
Many times the extra 'time' for a package is not because of lack of containers of space to move things. It is from things like 3 of my loaders did not show up today and I just had 5 trucks all show up at the same time. Where I could normally handle it. Now 1-3 trucks will have to wait.
There is probably another thing they do not take into account is weight. Sure that cube fits PERFECTLY right there. But it needs to be as low in the load as you can get it or it will dump the trailer over.
Re:Oh, sure. (Score:3, Insightful)
The idea that energy prices should be kept high, through a carbon tax, is intended to harness the market's ability to provide approximations of optimal solutions to resource distribution problems by internalizing the environmental costs of energy use.
Bah, you don't need a tax for that. All that need to happen is to stop subsidizing security in the Middle East.
Re:Amazon (Score:3, Insightful)
Beleive it or not, overseas shipping containers are typically smaller than domestic shipping containers. Why? Cell guides on ships make it more efficient to use as few sizes as possible as to never have empty slots on the ships due to size issues. Also, the prongs on the tophandlers & cranes are positioned at set points, and making the containers longer requires costly structural improvements that outweigh the benefits. Most trucks you see on roads are 53' where ships typically carry 20's and 40's, with a few 45's. Keep in mind this may be different in areas near the coasts or denser countries (I'm in the US).
Also, overseas shipping containers are much much heavier than domestic ones because they have to be picked up from the top & withstand constant movement and stacking, where domestics are on a truck 99% of the time and are designed to never be lifted. As info, all of the grocry store & wall-mart containers you see with the big pretty advertisements on the side never go overseas, they are loaded at distribution centers near the coast that receive the shipping containers. The steel-ribbed ugly containers are the ones that go overseas.
Yes, there are inneficiencies to standardized shipping, but it removes more inefficiencies than it creates. Thats how the costs go down.
How does this save the planet? (Score:2, Insightful)
Even naive packing algorithms such as "first-fit" have been shown to be relatively close to optimal [wikipedia.org].
If naive packing algorithms waste at most 30% of space (i.e. a constant coefficient), but the population (and our associated resource consumption) is growing at least geometrically if not exponentially, then one must show that more efficient packing is at least a catalyst for some other kind of supralinear reduction in resource consumption (or other benefit) for the premise of "saving the planet" to be plausible.
By all means, someone can correct my simplistic thinking?