A stochastic programming model for optical fiber manufacturing

Optical fibers are made of solid rods of glass called preforms. The ends of the preforms are heated and fibers are drawn from them. The fibers may randomly break during the process. The random lengths of fibers produced are then cut on-line into standard lengths. The cutting process should be directed in a way that minimizes the expected loss due to unsatisfied demand. In this paper we show that statistical information about fiber breakage can be utilized in designing the cutting process. Our test results affirm that a significant improvement can be made over the naive approach.