Abstract
We are working with a company on a hard industrial optimisation problem: a version of the well-known Cutting Stock Problem in which a paper mill must cut rolls of paper following certain cutting patterns to meet customer demands. In our problem each roll to be cut may have a different size, the cutting patterns are semi-automated so that we have only indirect control over them via a list of continuous parameters called a request, and there are multiple mills each able to use only one request. We solve the problem using a combination of machine learning and optimisation techniques. First we approximate the distribution of cutting patterns via Monte Carlo simulation. Secondly we cover the distribution by applying a k-medoids algorithm. Thirdly we use the results to build an ILP model which is then solved.
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Prestwich, S.D., Fajemisin, A.O., Climent, L., O’Sullivan, B. (2015). Solving a Hard Cutting Stock Problem by Machine Learning and Optimisation. In: Appice, A., Rodrigues, P., Santos Costa, V., Soares, C., Gama, J., Jorge, A. (eds) Machine Learning and Knowledge Discovery in Databases. ECML PKDD 2015. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 9284. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23528-8_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-23528-8_21
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