Santa Cruz has a stock of millions of unities of remedies, perfumes and psychotropics. It is approximately five thousand and 2 hundred different items. Daily are processed about six thousand client request, generating thereabout nine thousand volumes between boxes and paper bags, at the end of a day it is separated from 200.000 to 400.000 product unities.

Without an automatic solution the operators doesn't have how to evaluate, in a quicker and precise way, the number, quantity and type of the volumes necessary to arrange the request's items. This used to result in:

> Empty spaces in the boxes;
> Unnecessary boxes in the packing line;
> Maintenance of intermediate stocks of boxes along the line.
> Statistic control of the number of requested volumes.

As consequence, an increasing of the cost of request's packing. Therefore the optimization of spaces occupation in the boxes represented a priority in the process of packing.

To solve the problem of the cubage were create specific algorithms for Santa Cruz's necessities. The routines that implement the algorithms were developed in ANSI C language and integrated with de COBOL modules of the company's main system.

The algorithmic solution developed and the acquired experience with the project enable VOXEL Engenharia de Sistemas to obtain solutions for problems of cubage associated to :

> Truck charge;
> Containers charge in ships;
> Containers storage at warehouses.

The solution was developed in partnership with the CEFET´s research group of Manufacturer Flexible Systems.
do CEFET-PR.