Better-Fit Heuristic for One-Dimensional Bin-Packing Problem

This paper reports a study on better-fit heuristic for classical bin-packing problem, proposed in [1]. Better-fit replaces an existing object from a bin with the next object in the list, if it can fill the bin better than the object replaced. It takes O(n²m) time where n is the number of objects and m is the number of distinct object sizes in the list. It behaves as off-line as well as on-line heuristic with the condition of permanent assignment of objects to a bin removed. Experiments have been conducted on representative problem instances in terms of expected waste rates. It outperforms off-line best-fit-decreasing heuristic on most of the instances. It always performs better than the on-line best-fit heuristic.