Cutting-Pattern Enumeration on a Microcomputer: A Case Study

Summary

By purchasing material in a limited number of standard sizes, manufacturing companies can reduce the cost of material acquisition and stocking significantly. Reducing standard sizes to smaller widths or lengths gives rise to a class of scheduling problems in which a few cutting patterns must be selected from a large number of possible patterns so that the cost of the reduction process and material wastage is minimized. We describe how a microcomputer-based scheduling system was developed and implemented for a company manufacturing building materials but which could be adapted easily to a wide range of similar problems.