ContainerWizard

This proof of concept solves the space optimization problem in transportation and storage facilities. It helps logistics managers reduce manual load planning, drive down shipping and storage costs, and ensure faster deliveries.

Is your organization facing space optimization problems?

Explore ContainerWizard

Use cases

You’re a freight company engaged in regular cargo transportation and you need to use space efficiently in vehicles and containers.

You face frequent space shortages in your storage facilities.

You face increased demand for deliveries and need better fleet management to reduce shipping costs.

In your company, load planning is a time-consuming manual process that leads to frequent human errors.

Space calculator in action

Find out from the example below how your organization can benefit from a similar software solution. Let’s imagine you’re a freight forwarding company that needs to transport furniture from Europe to the US.

In ContainerWizard, it would take just five simple steps to make the necessary calculations for this transportation. In the end, we’ll see how much time the whole process takes.

10 sec

Step 1

Choose your need

First, select
Ship a container.

4 mins

Step 2

Add load groups

To ship a container, you need to add four load groups, and once you do, you can view their total volume and weight. If your need were to Move, you’d get three predefined load groups. But shipping a container requires adding sets of cargo manually. Yet you can use default load types like boxes, totes, and drums with set dimensions. If you want to enter parameters for certain load types manually, pick a custom load type.

2 mins

Step 3

Select space

At this stage, select Container. As with load types, there are default size parameters for containers, vehicles, and storage facilities, though you can change the dimensions if needed. Plus, you can opt for Custom Space and set parameters for your own storage space.

There are also space optimization slider bars for volume and weight limits, which are set by default to a minimum limit of 15 percent and a maximum limit of 90 percent. You can customize these sliders as well depending on your needs.

3 mins

Step 4

Calculate

After clicking Calculate, you’ll find out how many containers you’ll need for transporting your cargo.

Once you make the necessary calculations for containers, you can click Save results to use these calculations later. If after transportation you also need to store cargo for a few days at the warehouse, you can click Storage and then Calculate to make one more space calculation.

If you also need to calculate the number of vehicles needed for further cargo transportation in the US, click Vehicles and then Calculate. You’ll see that you need five vehicles to transport your cargo and which load each vehicle will carry.

1 min

Step 5

Save the results

If you click Save results, you can get your calculation results to your email inbox in PDF, CSV, and JSON formats.

In total, it took 10 minutes to complete all the steps.

Technical solution

For ContainerWizard, we followed the block building approach combined with a tree search algorithm to solve the three-dimensional container loading problem.

This problem consists of five basic constraints that need to be taken into account. All boxes to load:

must be placed with their edges parallel to the walls of the container

must be placed within the container

can’t intersect each other

must be supported on all sides by other boxes if they aren’t on the floor

have six allowed orientations (certain load types have fewer)

Using a tree search algorithm, we calculate the optimal loading option for a set of cargo based on space dimensions and load parameters. The block building approach helps us get better results by arranging groups with loads of the same size into blocks (arrangement units made up of one or more boxes).

Possible custom implementations for your business

You can integrate your space optimization system with other systems (TMS, FMS, WMS, MRP, or other systems of your choice via a standard API)

Meet specific requirements for transportation of bulky, heavy, and fragile cargo

Tools for monitoring goods compatibility

Functionality for improving stacking in vehicles, containers, and storage places

3D modeling of cargo distribution in vehicles, containers, and warehouses

Importing of files with load lists into the space calculator to reduce manual data input

Would you like a similar solution to optimize deliveries and storage space?

We can help you build and implement a custom space calculator in your software product.

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