Fast heuristic for constrained homogenous T-shape cutting patterns

Homogenous T-shape (HTS) cutting patterns are welcomed when the two-phase process is used to produce rectangular pieces from the stock plate, where the plate is cut into homogenous strips at the first phase, and the strips are divided into pieces at the second phase. A heuristic is presented for generating constrained HTS patterns, where the objective is to maximize the pattern value that is equal to the total value of the included pieces, observing the upper bound constraint on the frequency of each piece type. The heuristic is based on dynamic programming and branch-and-bound techniques. It can yield solutions close to optimal with short computation time. By providing good initial solutions, the heuristic can greatly improve the time efficiency of an existing exact branch-and-bound algorithm.