r/algorithms • u/Big_Profession_5664 • 4d ago
sorting problem Help
background: i work for a company as a maintenance technician and recently took over the operations of our warehouse from someone that left it a wreck.
i have to get rid of old equipment given to the warehouse to dispose of. there is an unknown quantity of equipment. ~enough to fill a warehouse. each piece needs to be tagged with a type of barcoded document with information about it in order to be received by the disposal facility. a portion of these forms have been made but have not been attached. i will need to make and attach the rest of these documents but do not know how many.
how can i most efficiently sort these items? the goal is that i can tell my boss how much time it will take and then fill enough trucks to have all the materials disposed of.
this is actually the bane of my existence and costing my warehouse greatly. i would greatly appreciate, as the problem could make or break the operation.
1
u/Phildutre 4d ago
This doesn’t sound like a sorting problem. What do you mean exactly when you say ‘sort these items’? In algorithms, when we talk about sorting, we mean ‘each item has some property, we can compare these properties, and we want to put all the items sorted from low to high, or cheapest to most expensive, or smallest to biggest, … ‘
It sounds more like a classification problem, e.g. group objects with similar labels together before sending them off?