Instance space analysis for 2D bin packing mathematical models

Abstract

In this paper, we apply Instance Space Analysis (ISA) to study the two-dimensional bin-packing problem. We consider classical and newly-generated instances to test the performance of four mixed-integer programming (MIP) models from the literature. This is the first time ISA is used to compare MIP models. We set as a performance metric the time taken by the black-box MIP solver CPLEX to obtain a proven optimal solution when running each model. Our results provide a new perspective on the different models’ performance according to each instance’s features.