Planning Modes

LOP offers three planning modes that trade off computation time against solution quality. You choose the mode each time you run the optimizer by clicking one of the three buttons in the editor toolbar. The right choice depends on how complex your shipment is, how much time you have, and how much every percentage point of utilization matters.

Quick Plan

Typical time: 1–2 seconds

Quick Plan runs the constructive heuristic only. The optimizer sorts items from largest to smallest by volume, then places each item into the tightest available space that satisfies all hard constraints, using a layer-based skyline algorithm with guillotine space splitting.

The result is a fully valid plan — no overlapping items, no weight limit violations, all hard constraints respected — produced almost instantly.

Best for:

• Checking whether a shipment will physically fit in a container at all
• Getting a quick estimate of utilization before committing to a full optimization run
• Simple loads with few items or items that are all similar in size
• Exploratory planning where you are testing several container type options in rapid succession

Smart Plan

Typical time: 8–12 seconds

Smart Plan runs the full two-stage pipeline: constructive placement followed by local search optimization. After the initial arrangement is built, LOP's local search engine makes thousands of small improvement moves — swapping item positions, trying different rotations, reinserting items into tighter gaps — accepting each change only if it improves the composite score.

This typically increases utilization by 5–15 percentage points compared to Quick Plan for mixed cargo loads, and often significantly improves weight balance and stability as well.

Best for:

• The majority of everyday freight planning tasks
• Shipments with a mix of item sizes where tight packing matters
• When weight balance and stability scores are important alongside utilization
• Production use — the quality-to-time ratio is optimized for real workflow use

Max Fill

Typical time: 30–60 seconds

Max Fill runs the complete three-stage pipeline: constructive placement, local search, and a full metaheuristic search using Simulated Annealing. The metaheuristic phase explores a much larger space of possible arrangements than local search alone, including solutions that are temporarily worse in order to escape local optima and find a globally better arrangement.

For complex shipments with many items of varied sizes, Max Fill can find arrangements that are noticeably better than Smart Plan — particularly for plans that were close to full but left a few unplaced items that Max Fill manages to fit.

Best for:

• High-value shipments where maximizing fill rate has direct cost implications
• Complex loads with 100+ items of varied sizes and constraints
• Situations where Smart Plan leaves several items unplaced and you need to try harder
• Final planning runs before issuing a packing list to the warehouse

Progressive Results

All three modes update the 3D viewport in real time as the optimizer works. You always see the best arrangement found so far — you do not have to wait for the run to complete before you can evaluate the result.

For Max Fill runs, this is particularly useful: if the score looks excellent after 20 seconds, you can stop the optimizer early and use the current result. There is no penalty for stopping before the full time budget is used.

Comparing Modes at a Glance

Re-Running the Optimizer

You can run the optimizer multiple times on the same plan. Each run starts fresh from the current item and container configuration. If you have made manual edits since the last solve, running the optimizer again will re-optimize from scratch using those changes as input.

Next Steps

• Understanding Scores — what the five quality scores measure and how to improve them
• Manual Editing — adjust individual placements after optimization
• Constraints & Rules — what hard and soft constraints the optimizer works with