A partitioned cutting-stock problem applied in the meat industry

The paper reports on a linear programming application in the meat industry. The problem is formulated as a variant of the cutting-stock or trim problem, where the objective is to maximize the return from selling products yielding from cutting patterns applied to animal carcasses. One feature of the formulation is the partitioning of cutting patterns among carcass sections. Since the sections are relatively independent, this partitioning vastly reduces the number of cutting patterns in the formulation. Implementation is on a personal computer, and the system is used by a meat company for market planning. The system uses a commercial database to handle data entry and solution reporting, and has been found to be extremely user-friendly.