Instances for the three-stage packing problem (3-stage PP)

Full description of instances for the three-stage packing problem (3-stage PP).
The 3-stage PP is a challenging industrial combinatorial optimization problem that involves optimizing pallet building, pallet stacking, and truck loading to reduce resource consumption (i.e., the number of trucks needed).
Constraints derived from a large European distribution company were also incorporated.

This problem is studied in the research article titled "Row and column generation approaches for a three-stage industrial packing problem for truck-transport preparation » (Hadj Salem et al., 2025).
This paper has been accepted as a full paper for a 25 minutes oral presentation at the 15th International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems (ICORES 2016), which will take place from March 9-11, 2016, in Marbella, Spain.

There are five groups, each with the following dimensions: extra small (XS), small (S), medium (M), large (L), and extra large (XL).
Each group has four classes with five instances each, for a total of 100 instances.
An instance is defined by the following format: inst_c_b_t_v.txt, where:
- c: is the total number of clients. It varies in {5, 7, 10, 15, 20}
- b: is the number of box types per client. It varies in {3, 5, 7, 10, 15}.
- t: is the number of truck types. It varies in {1, 2, 3, 4}.
- v: is the “version” (seed).