Mixed pallet stacking: an overview and summary of the 2010 PerMIS special session

Stacking boxes of various sizes and contents on pallets (i.e. making mixed pallets) is a primary method of preparing goods for shipment from a warehouse to a store or other distant site. A special session of the 2010 PerMIS workshop was held to examine mixed palletizing issues. Papers were presented by end-users, vendors, researchers, and evaluators of palletizing solutions. This paper presents a summary of this session and discusses issues ranging from how to construct pallet build plans to metrics for evaluating these plans to competitions that feature novel palletizing approaches.