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Modeling the egg packing station planning problem

Book Contribution - Book Chapter Conference Contribution

This paper presents the planning problem encountered by egg packing station managers. In an egg packing station, pallets containing unsorted eggs arrive daily from chicken farms and need to be packed into order-specific boxes on packing lanes. The grader automatically identifies damaged eggs and grades the remaining eggs in several weight classes. The number of packing lanes is station specific but can reach up to 32. The orders are destined for retailers and they specify the number of required eggs and a set of allowed grades. The challenge is to assign these orders to the packing lanes such that the incoming supply (distribution of grades) is completely covered by active orders on the packing lanes. This paper positions the egg packing problem in the optimization literature and proposes a model that efficiently covers this planning problem. Furthermore, we point out several future research directions such as additional practical work floor constraints and algorithmic challenges.
Book: Operations Research Proceedings 2108
ISBN:978-3-030-18499-5
Publication year:2019
Accessibility:Open