An iterative sequential heuristic procedure to a real-life 1.5-dimensional cutting stock problem

This paper addresses a real-life 1.5D cutting stock problem, which arises in a make-to-order plastic company. The problem is to choose a subset from the set of stock rectangles to be used for cutting into a number of smaller rectangular pieces so as to minimize total production cost and meet orders. The total production cost includes not only material wastage, as in traditional cutting stock problems, but also production time. A variety of factors are taken into account, like cutter knife changes, machine restrictions, due dates and other work in progress limitations. These restrictions make the combinatorial structure of the problem more complex. As a result, existing algorithms and mathematical models are no longer appropriate. Thus we developed a new 1.5D cutting stock model with multiple objectives and multi-constraints and solve this problem in an incomplete enumerative way. The computational results show that the solution procedure is easy to implement and works very well.