Modelling and optimising switching on a physical binary sorter

Abstract In this paper, we apply MaxSAT to a system built around a physical binary sorter that functions as a load balancer between warehouses. We study a sorter operating in real time on 4.5 million elements per year. The optimization task is to minimize the switching needed to route a sequence of elements, under an arbitrary binary function that constrains the achievable load balance. The case study is drawn from a company operating hundreds of such sorters, which are essential to its internal logistics. We examine the problem from both theoretical and practical perspectives: we present an online model, analyze its properties, and evaluate several implementations across different scenarios. Experiments show switching reductions of 63 and 48% for two problem variants in a partial information setting.