Cutting Stock Problem
The cutting-stock problem is an optimization problem, or more specifically, an integer linear programming problem. It arises from many applications in industry. Imagine that you work in a paper mill and you have a number of rolls of paper of fixed width waiting to be cut, yet different customers want different numbers of rolls of various-sized widths. How are you going to cut the rolls so that you minimize the waste (amount of left-overs)?
Solving this problem to optimality can be economically significant: a difference of 1% for a modern paper machine can be worth more than one million USD per year.
Read more about Cutting Stock Problem: Formulation and Solution Approaches, Illustration of One-dimensional Cutting-stock Problem, Classification, Cutting-stock Problem in Paper, Film and Metal Industries, History
Famous quotes containing the words cutting, stock and/or problem:
“Werther had a love for Charlotte
Such as words could never utter;
Would you know how first he met her?
She was cutting bread and butter.”
—William Makepeace Thackeray (1811–1863)
“In the case of our main stock of well-worn predicates, I submit that the judgment of projectibility has derived from the habitual projection, rather than the habitual projection from the judgment of projectibility. The reason why only the right predicates happen so luckily to have become well entrenched is just that the well entrenched predicates have thereby become the right ones.”
—Nelson Goodman (b. 1906)
“The perfect detective story cannot be written. The type of mind which can evolve the perfect problem is not the type of mind that can produce the artistic job of writing.”
—Raymond Chandler (1888–1959)