Patent Document ID: 8972304
Application ID: 13657129
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A system of packing a vessel by maximizing vessel utilization subject to tank capacity constraints at one or more terminals, comprising: a computer system comprising a processor that receives a schedule request and one or more constraints for vessel packing of one or more products in one or more vessels; and an optimization engine tangibly embodied on the computer system comprising a processor, the optimization engine: generates a vessel packing plan comprising one or more compartments based on the one or more constraints using a depth-first search with backtracking algorithm, the depth-first search with backtracking algorithm comprises a solution represented by a vector V=(v_ 1 ,. .. , v_n), the ith component of the vector being a product and volume assigned to the ith compartment: constructs a partial solution with elements fixed for the first k elements of the vector where k is less than or equal to n; constructs the set of possible candidates S for the (k+1)st position; constructs an extension by adding the next element from S to the partial solution; and checks if the extension yields a partial solution, when the extension yields a partial solution, the optimization engine continues to extend the partial solution as long as the extension yields a partial solution, and when S is empty, the optimization engine backtracks to v_k and replaces v_k with a next candidate.