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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.\n                  <\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1007\/s10479-025-06903-2","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,3]],"date-time":"2026-02-03T14:20:02Z","timestamp":1770128402000},"page":"447-468","update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":0,"title":["Modelling and optimising switching on a physical binary sorter"],"prefix":"10.1007","volume":"358","author":[{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0003-3387-2094","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Josep Maria","family":"Salvia Hornos","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-7150-5423","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"C\u00e8sar","family":"Fern\u00e1ndez Cam\u00f3n","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-4864-0328","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Carles","family":"Mateu Pi\u00f1ol","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"ORCID":"https:\/\/orcid.org\/0000-0002-6632-3086","authenticated-orcid":false,"given":"Joao","family":"Marques-Silva","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Ivet","family":"Rafegas Fonoll","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]},{"given":"Josep","family":"Cirera Balcells","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"vocabulary":"crossref","role":"author"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2026,2,3]]},"reference":[{"key":"6903_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"publisher","unstructured":"Ascheuer, N., Gr\u00f6tschel, M., Krumke, S.O., Rambau, J. 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