Deriving filtering algorithms from dedicated algorithms: zoom on the Bin Packing problem

Abstract : Solving NP-complete problems can be tough because of the combinatorics. Constraint Programming and Approximation algorithms can be used to solve these problems. In this paper, we explore how to automatically derive filtering algorithms from a dedicated algorithm solving the Bin Packing problem. To this end, we automatically derive a filtering algorithm from the Best-Fit algorithm. We empirically show that our filtering algorithm BF-Prop is experimentally strictly more efficient in terms of filtering than Shaw’s state-of-the-art global constraint.