sci.op-research

We're looking for a vehicle packing/loading algorithm for an
analytical study. It's a military operation so the geometries/weights
of the equipment are not standardized to a small set of same dimension
sets like standardized containers. I googled the problem and came up
with some but not much commercial software.

A google scholar search of course gave me plenty of algorithm hits but
I can not tell which have migrated to real implementation. I'm on OR
guy, but this problem is new to me in an applied sense. We can write
code and/or hook up data sets to an optimization or heuristic engine
if that's what works..

BTW, the problem looks to be 2D with a center of mass constraint
desirable if we can formulate it in. And the problem in reality is RO-
RO,(Roll On, Roll Off) so we'd like to keep the stuff facing back to
front. Because it is an analytical study, we do have leeway on
approximating physical reality, but we'd like to get as close as
possible to keeping things from falling over.

Any feedback on ways to tackle this real problem would be greatly
appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve