The optimal design of personalized bank check printing plates

Billions of personalized bank checks are used by individuals and organizations each year. Before the checks can be used, they must be customized with the account number and customer’s identification. In this paper, the authors discuss the problem of designing the bank check printing plates to minimize the total cost of printing the checks. The problem of assigning orders to plates may be complicated by customer requirements. The problem is initially formulated as an integer linear programming problem. A heuristic procedure, developed because of the long solution times required by the I.P., is presented, and computational experience is discussed.