A mixed integer programming model for solving a layout problem in the fashion industry

The cutting operation in the high fashion clothing industry essentially involves putting several layers of cloth on a long cutting table and fixing templates of the parts of several articles on top of the stack before the actual cutting can be initiated. This is a very time-consuming task giving rise to high setup costs in addition to waste production resulting from the cutting process. Total production costs can then be optimized by minimizing the number of these setups while at the same time producing little or no waste. In this paper a mixed integer programming model is proposed that searches for an optimal set of cutting patterns, each giving a combination of articles to be cut in one operation, and corresponding stack heights.