Title: Kansei engineering, humans and computers: efficient dynamic programming algorithms for combinatorial food packing problems

Authors: Shinji Imahori, Yoshiyuki Karuno, Hiroshi Nagamochi, Xiaoming Wang

Addresses: Department of Computational Science and Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi 464-8603, Japan. ' Department of Mechanical and System Engineering, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto 606-8585, Japan. ' Department of Applied Mathematics and Physics, Kyoto University, Yoshida-honmachi, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan. ' Department of Mechanical and System Engineering, Kyoto Institute of Technology, Matsugasaki, Sakyo-ku, Kyoto-shi, Kyoto 606-8585, Japan

Abstract: The packing system performs an operation of choosing a subset I′ from the set of I of the current n items to produce a package of foods. By repeating the packing operation, it produces a large number of packages one by one. The primary objective is to choose a subset I′ so that the total weight of chosen items is as close to a specified target weight T as possible. We additionally try to maximise the total priority of chosen items as the second objective so that items with longer durations in hoppers are preferably chosen. We show that the combinatorial food packing problem can be solved in O(nT) time if all input data are integral.

Keywords: automatic combination weighers; food packing; target weight constraints; combinatorial optimisation; lexicographic bi-criteria optimisation; computer algorithms; dynamic programming; pseudopolynomial time algorithms; optimal solutions; minimal solutions; kansei engineering; weighing.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBM.2011.040817

International Journal of Biometrics, 2011 Vol.3 No.3, pp.228 - 245

Received: 05 Dec 2010
Accepted: 07 Dec 2010
Published online: 24 Jan 2015 *

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