Pallet building and truck loading strategies for an inter-depot transportation problem

The mission of logistics is basically to get the right goods or services to the right place, at the right time, and in the desired conditions, while making the greatest contribution to the company [1]. Everyday a distribution company has to decide how to put goods onto pallets according to the customers’ orders and then how to efficiently distribute these pallets among the number of trucks so as to reduce the trucks needed to supply the customers. The first problem is known as the pallet loading problem, whereas the second problem is the container loading problem. But, we solve the problem in one phase, building and placing pallets at the same time. For each position in the truck a pallet is built, tailored for that position according to the constraints. At each iteration, a randomized constructive procedure builds a solution for loading all the products.