Article ID: | iaor20121340 |
Volume: | 218 |
Issue: | 2 |
Start Page Number: | 358 |
End Page Number: | 365 |
Publication Date: | Apr 2012 |
Journal: | European Journal of Operational Research |
Authors: | Cui Yaodong, Huang Baixiong |
Keywords: | production, combinatorial optimization, programming: linear, cutting stock |
Three‐staged guillotine patterns are widely used in the manufacturing industry to cut stock plates into rectangular items. The cutting cost often increases with the number of cuts required. This paper focuses on the rectangular two‐dimensional cutting stock problem, where three‐staged guillotine patterns are used, and the objective is to minimize the sum of plate and cutting costs. The column generation framework is used to solve the problem. It uses a pattern‐generation procedure to obtain the patterns. The cutting cost is considered in both the pattern‐generation procedure and the objective of the linear programming formulation. The computational results indicate that the approach can reduce the number of cuts, without increasing the plate cost.