Title
Cutting and Reuse: An Application from Automobile Component Manufacturing
Abstract
This paper presents a decision support tool for solving a cutting and reuse problem arising in a European plant devoted to the production of gear belts. In this production, rectangular pieces of rubberised nylon are cut using machines employing parallel blades, so as to obtain rectangular components of identical height and (possibly) different width. A component is then used to produce a set of belts with the same girth; but, if necessary, the girth required can also be obtained by sewing together two components. The major objectives of optimisation are: trim loss minimisation, quality control, workload equalisation, setup minimisation. The problem, a particular one-dimensional cutting stock with both cutting and reuse decision variables, has been formulated in terms of integer linear programming and then efficiently solved by applying standard packages within a column generation scheme. A significant improvement of performance has been obtained in terms of both economic savings and product quality. This has convinced the management to implement the model in the plant operation.
Year
DOI
Venue
2002
10.1287/opre.50.6.923.348
Operations Research
Keywords
Field
DocType
automobile component manufacturing,reuse problem,rectangular piece,product quality,reuse decision variable,rectangular component,quality control,european plant,plant operation,setup minimisation,decision support tool
Decision variables,Column generation,Mathematical optimization,Trim,Reuse,Workload,Decision support system,Integer programming,Minimisation (psychology),Mathematics,Operations management
Journal
Volume
Issue
ISSN
50
6
0030-364X
Citations 
PageRank 
References 
10
0.69
6
Authors
4
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Claudio Arbib111922.41
Fabrizio Marinelli225820.55
Fabrizio Rossi314016.33
Francesco Di Iorio4100.69