

FreshDirect wrote "an enormous amount of code" to minimize boxes per order - sstrudeau
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/27/delivering-more-groceries-and-fewer-boxes/

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EGF
I can honestly say I have noticed a big difference since they turned this new
system on. I get more items per box and never got 1 item per box anymore. At
first I thought they were being cheap - but its good to know they were
becoming smart.

I have been a FD customer for many years and although it takes them awhile to
react, they at least take the feedback and try to do something with it.

~~~
aichcon
I've been an FD customer for 3 years and I am pretty impressed with their
operation as well. The usability of their site is very good and they have a
lot of innovative ways of doing business.

\- Their sliced meats and cheeses usually have a sticker on them containing
the slicer's number and an e-mail address asking for feedback on the slicing.

\- They recently switched their egg carton packaging from a plastic bag with
foam sheets to shredded, recycled cardboard.

\- Their delivery trucks recently switched to all use biodiesel only.

\- As this article states, they've cut down their packing and boxing materials
and I expect it to get better as they switch to the returnable plastic
containers.

\- Throughout all of this they remain very competitive in terms of produce
quality and pricing. It's cheaper and better quality than the grocery stores
in my area.

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amelim
Does anyone know if this problem is NP-Complete? It sounds fairly similar to
the knapsack problem, so much so that this might be as hard as said problem.
However, I'm not sure if these specific conditions could be shown to be in NP.

~~~
jrockway
It sounds like the issue is not optimal packing, but rather getting the cheese
into the same box as the cereal without making the cheese spoil.

~~~
henning
My hopes of mentally writing this off as a straightforward implementation
exercise of well-known optimization heuristics have been spoiled. Maybe I
_couldn't_ have just sat down and banged it out in a few days with a little
Googling and going over old college lecture notes. Damn you, Hacker News!

