Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
481825 | European Journal of Operational Research | 2007 | 12 Pages |
This paper deals with glass cutting in an Italian plant producing parts for the automotive market. Glass cutting is basically organised in two phases: first, large rectangular sheets of the same type are obtained from a ribbon of flat glass and sent to warehouse; then, sheets of various types are taken from the warehouse and cut into small rectangular parts of various sizes according to demand. In both phases, trim loss is generated. A problem then arises of fulfilling the demand of small parts using a limited assortment of large sheets and minimizing the total trim loss. In this paper we describe a heuristic algorithm based on a p-median model with additional constraints that take into account all the relevant shop floor requirements. A computational study conducted on real instances provided by the plant is presented and discussed.