Hybridizing Beam Search with Tabu Search for the Irregular Packing Problem

The irregular packing problem involves arranging all the irregular pieces on a plate with the objective of maximizing the use of material. In this article, the layout is formed by the ordered sequence of the irregular pieces which is obtained by a hybrid search algorithm and where the order is decoded by a proposed placement principle. First, a novel no-fit-polygon (NFP) generator is introduced. Then, a placement principle is presented with the new NFP generator. Finally, a search algorithm hybridized with beam search (BS) and tabu search (TS) is proposed to search over the sequence. The numerical experiments with many benchmark problems show that the hybrid algorithm is an applicative and effective approach for solving the irregular packing problem. The hybrid algorithm can produce competitive solutions in less time than many other typical algorithms.