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Abstract
1. Introduction
1
Application of Decision Science in Business and Management
Various heuristic approaches have been proposed and discussed in the litera-
tures. The primary advantage of this approach is easier in solving the 2DCSP within
an acceptable and economical timeframe [18, 19]. The feasible solution is obtained
within a reasonable time, while the optimal solution cannot be guaranteed.
Chazelle [20] first proposed a popular heuristic algorithm, called the bottom-left
heuristic algorithm. Berkey and Wang [21] proposed a finite best strip heuristic
algorithm to improve the original bottom-left method which packs the items
directly into the bins with a best-fit policy. On the other hand, Lodi et al. [22]
proposed an integrated heuristic approach that initiates the solution by paralleling
the edges of the items and bins (i.e., materials) and utilizes a Tabu search [23, 24]
to explore the neighborhood and refine the possible solution. In order to enhance
the effectiveness of the algorithm used, Boschetti and Mingozzi [25, 26] consider
empty bins in turn and fill the bins with items in a sequence defined by the prices
attributed to the items and update them iteratively. Likewise, Monaci and Toth [27]
initially used Lagrangian-based heuristic to generate a set of covering programming
model to obtain a lower bound solution, in which the items cannot be rotated.
They applied geometric analytical techniques and Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition to
produce various lower bounds of the 2DCSP so that a better solution can be
compared and obtained [28–31].
Despite the development of heuristic approaches can obtain possible solution in
a reasonable time, however there is a scarcity of literature attempting to ensure the
achievement of an optimal solution. Moreover, the distance between one random
feasible solution and the actual global optimal solution can be enlarged with an
increasing problem size. Only a few studies attempted to develop deterministic
approaches for an optimal solution. For example, Chen et al. [32] formed a mathe-
matical model for packing a set of given rectangular items into a rectangular space
in which the dimension of the rectangular space is minimized. The packing problem
is equal to the cutting problem, and the problem can also be called as an assortment
problem. Moreover, Williams [33] formulated a mathematical model considering
the increased generalization of 2DCSP, to solve the problem with various sizes of
bins. However, Williams’ model contains an excessive number of binary variables
as indicated by Pisinger and Sigurd [31] who showed that Williams’ model has
difficulty in solving a standard 2DCSP by their computational experiments. The
subsequent studies by Li and Chang [34], Li et al. [35, 36], Hu et al. [37], and Tsai
et al. [38] (these approaches are called Li’s approach in this study) enhanced Chen’s
model with reformulation techniques based on reducing binary variables and
piecewise linearization technique. The deterministic approaches can guarantee the
achievement of global optimization with an acceptable tolerance; however, these
approaches are only suitable for the assortment problem (i.e., cutting rectangular
items from one material only), while many manufacturing situations require
considering minimal number of materials.
Aiming to close the knowledge gap, this study modifies the two programs of the
assortment problem proposed by Chen et al. [32] and Li and Chang [34] to be two
corresponding deterministic models for the 2DCSP. As an innovative approach, a
global approach of the 2DCSP with a logarithmic number of binary variables and
extra constraints is proposed and demonstrated.
The remainder of this study is organized as follows: Section 2 discusses the
2DCSP formulations. Section 3 proposes the 2DCSP models with logarithmic
number of binary variables and extra constraints. Numerical examples are given in
Section 4 to demonstrate the theoretical advances and advantages of the proposed
global approach. Section 5 gives the concluding remarks.
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A Global Method for a Two-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem in the Manufacturing Industry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89376
2. Problem formulations
Given n small rectangular items, the 2DCSP is to cut all items within large
rectangular materials with the objective of minimizing the number of materials
used. Denote x and y as the width and the length of the enveloping rectangle. By
referring to the method of Chen et al. [32], a mathematical program can be formed
with the objective of minimizing the volume (i.e., Min xy) as discussed in Section
2.1. In the 2DCSP, the minimal number of materials can reduce the manufacturing
costs. Thus Section 2.2 explains how to reformulate two new 2DCSP programs based
on the original model in Section 2.1. Firstly, the terminologies, including decision
variables and parameters, are introduced in Tables 1 and 2.
The cutting problem considering one material is also called the assortment
problem, which considers cutting a set of given rectangular items within a rectan-
gular material of minimum area. Avoiding the overlapping of items is the core
requirements. Chen et al. [32] and Li and Chang
[34] use four binary variables
ai, j , bi, j , ci, j , di, j and two binary variables ui, j , vi, j , respectively, to handle the
non-overlapping conditions, as shown in Table 3.
The following assortment program is proposed by Chen et al. [32]:
Original (a)
Min xy
s:t: x j þ p j s j þ q j 1 s j ≤ xi þ x 1 ai, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (1)
Parameter Meaning
ðx, yÞ x and y are the upper bounds of x and y, respectively. These items also denote the width and length of a
given rectangular material
Table 1.
Parameters in the 2DCSP.
Variable Meaning
x i , yi The bottom-left coordinate of rectangular item i
si An orientation indicator for a given rectangular item i. si ¼ 1 if pi is parallel to the x-axis; otherwise,
si ¼ 0 if pi is parallel to the y-axis (si is a binary variable)
Table 2.
Decision variables in the 2DCSP.
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Application of Decision Science in Business and Management
1 1 0 0 0 0 0
2 0 1 0 0 1 0
3 0 0 1 0 0 1
4 0 0 0 1 1 1
Table 3.
Four cases of non-overlapping conditions.
xi þ pi si þ qi ð1 si Þ ≤ x j þ x 1 bi, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (2)
y j þ q j s j þ p j 1 s j ≤ yi þ y 1 ci, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (3)
yi þ qi si þ pi ð1 si Þ ≤ y j þ y 1 di, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (4)
ai, j þ bi, j þ ci, j þ di, j ¼ 1 for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (5)
xi þ pi si þ qi ð1 si Þ ≤ x ≤ x for i ¼ 1, …, n, (6)
yi þ qi si þ pi ð1 si Þ ≤ y ≤ y for i ¼ 1, …, n, (7)
where ai, j , bi, j , ci, j , di, j , and si are binary variables; xi and yi are nonnegative
continuous variables; Constraints (1)–(5) ensure that the rectangular items are non-
overlapping, and Constraints (6) and (7) are to cut all of the rectangular items
within an enveloping rectangular material ðx, yÞ.
Remark 1. Original (a) uses 2n2 n binary variables (ai, j , bi, j , ci, j , di, j ) and 2:5n
ðn 1Þ þ 2n constraints to formulate an assortment problem with n rectangular items.
By referring to Li and Chang [34], an alternative mathematical model can be
expressed as follows:
Original (b)
Min xy
s.t. (6) and (7),
x j þ p j s j þ q j 1 s j ≤ xi þ x ui, j þ vi, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (8)
xi þ pi si þ qi ð1 si Þ ≤ x j þ x 1 ui, j þ vi, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (9)
y j þ q j s j þ p j 1 s j ≤ yi þ y 1 þ ui, j vi, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (10)
yi þ qi si þ pi ð1 si Þ ≤ y j þ y 2 ui, j vi, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (11)
where ui, j , vi, j , and si are binary variables; xi and yi are nonnegative continuous
variables; and Constraints (8)–(11) ensure that the rectangular items are non-overlapping.
Remark 2. Original (b) uses n2 binary variables (ui, j , vi, j ) and 2n2 constraints to
formulate an assortment problem with n rectangular items.
However, these two models are inappropriate for directly solving the general
2DCSP because the objective of the 2DCSP must minimize the number of materials
used for cutting all items. By referring to the two models above, two corresponding
2DCSP models are proposed in Section 2.2.
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A Global Method for a Two-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem in the Manufacturing Industry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89376
yi þ qi si þ pi ð1 si Þ ≤ Y for i ¼ 1, …, n, (18)
where si , ai, j , bi, j , ci, j , di, j , and Q i,k are binary variables; xi , yi and Y are nonnega-
tive continuous variables; Constraints (1), (2), (5), (12) and (13) ensure that the
rectangular items are non-overlapping; Constraints (15)–(17) mean that each rect-
angular item is fitly cut from one of the m materials; Constraint (18) obtains the
accumulated length of materials used; and the objective function minimizes the
accumulated length of materials used.
There are nm new binary variables (i.e., Q i,k for i ¼ 1, 2, …, n and k ¼ 1, 2, …, m)
in Constraints (15)–(17) of P1 (a) model. It aims to cut the ith rectangular item from
the kth material if Q i,k ¼ 1, and Constraint (17) forces any rectangular item to be
cut from one of such materials. Supposing that rectangular item i0 is cut from the
k0 th material, then Q i0 ,k0 ¼ 1 and Q i0 ,k ¼ 0 for k 6¼ k0 and k ¼ 1, 2, …, m. Constraints
(15)–(17) will force the y-axis position of rectangular item i0 cut from the k0 th
material as shown below:
Remark 3. P1 (a) requires 2n2 nð1 mÞ binary variables and ð5n2 þ 3nÞ=2
constraints to form a 2DCSP program.
Referring to the Original (b), another corresponding 2DCSP program can be
formulated as follows:
P1 (b)
Min Y
s.t. (8), (9), (14)–(18),
y j þ q j s j þ p j 1 s j ≤ yi þ my 1 þ ui, j vi, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (21)
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Application of Decision Science in Business and Management
yi þ qi si þ pi ð1 si Þ ≤ y j þ my 2 ui, j vi, j for i, j ¼ 1, …, n and i < j, (22)
where si , ui, j , vi, j , and Q i,k are binary variables and xi , yi , and Y are nonnegative
continuous variables.
Remark 4. P1 (b) requires n2 þ nm binary variables and 2nðn þ 1Þ constraints to
formulate a 2DCSP program.
Although both P1 (a) and P1 (b) can obtain a minimal number of materials used,
there is mainly an issue needed to be addressed. That is, an excessive number of
binary variables Q i,k is used to assign rectangular item i into one of the materials;
such that the computational load becomes a serious burden as the size of the
problem grows.
As indicated by Li et al. [39], reducing the number of binary variables can
accelerate the solving speed. Hence, we can roughly estimate the number of mate-
rials by the following remark.
Remark 5. The number of materials can be reduced from m to f where f ≤ m by
the following initial calculating:
n
P
f ffi⌈ xi yi=xy⌉, (23)
i¼1
where if f value is not big enough, i.e., in solving P1(a) and P1(b) are infeasible,
then we can accumulate f , i.e., f ¼ f þ 1, until feasible solutions exist.
By referring to Remark 5, the number of binary variables in Constraints
(15)–(18) can be reduced from nm to nf where f ≤ m. Moreover, this study
proposes a reformulation technique using logarithmic number of binary variables
for the P1 (a) and P1 (b) models. The detail of technique is then discussed in
Section 3.
After considering Remark 5, for a 2DCSP with n rectangular items and f mate-
rials, the P1 (a) and P1 (b) models will require nf binary variables (Q i,k ) to cut each
rectangular item from one of the materials. The computational efficiency of the P1
(a) and P1 (b) models become a serious burden when an increasing size of the
Pf
2DCSP. For any rectangular item i, Constraint (17) ( k¼1 Q i,k ¼ 1) is an SOS1
constraint [40], which is an ordered set of variables where only one variable may be
one. An SOS1 constraint model with size f will generally require f binary variables.
However, Vielma and Nemhauser [41] use SOS1 constraint with a logarithmic
number of binary variables and constraints. This section utilizes the concept of
Vielma and Nemhauser [41] and introduces the binary variables Q i,r (i ¼ 1, …, n and
r ¼ 1, …, ⌈ log 2 f ⌉) to replace the original binary variables (Q i,k ) of the P1 (a) and P1
(b) models. Thus, the number of required binary variables can be reduced from nf
to n⌈ log 2 f ⌉. The following remarks and propositions discuss the logarithmic
reformulation technique of the 2DCSP.
Remark 6. Let K ¼ 1, 2, …, f ¼ 2θ , θ ¼ ⌈ log 2 f ⌉, and k ∈ K be the injective
T k
BðkÞ ¼ ½w1 , w2 , …, wθ and wr ¼ 1 ⌈ r1 ⌉%2 for r ¼ 1, …, θ: (24)
2
f
X
Q k ¼ 1 and Q k ∈ f0, 1g: (25)
k¼1
The Constraint set (25) and (26) only requires θ binary variables ðQ r Þ, 2θ
additional constraints, and f additional continuous variables ðλk Þ:
f
X
λk ¼ 1, (26)
k¼1
X
λk ¼ Q r for r ¼ 1, …, θ, (27)
þ
k ∈ S ðrÞ
where
i. Q r ∈ f0, 1g.
Proof: Following Li et al. [39], Constraints (26) and (27) are used to construct
the SOS1 property.
Following Proposition 1, we then have Proposition 2 that uses ⌈ log 2 f ⌉ binary
variables to determine whether rectangular item i could be exactly cut from one of
the given materials.
Proposition 2. Let f be the number of materials, y the length of material, and
yi the y-axis position of rectangular item i. The original Constraint set (15)–(17)
of the P1 (a) and P1 (b) models will be re-expressed by the following
linear system, which holds the rectangular item i to be cut from one of the given
materials:
f
X
yi þ qi si þ pi ð1 si Þ ≤ kyλi,k for i ¼ 1, …, n, (28)
k¼1
f
X
yi ≥ ðk 1Þyλi,k for i ¼ 1, …, n, (29)
k¼1
f
X
λi,k ¼ 1 for i ¼ 1, …, n, (30)
k¼1
X
λi,k ¼ Q i,r for i ¼ 1, …, n and r ¼ 1, …, θ ¼ ⌈ log 2 f ⌉, (31)
þ
k ∈ S ðrÞ
where Sþ ðrÞ and S ðrÞ are the same as the notations in Proposition 1 and
si , Q i,r ∈ f0, 1g.
Proof: According to Proposition 1, the continuous variables λi,k with the
Constraint set (30) and (31) have the characteristics of binary variables. Therefore,
the Constraint set (28)–(30) is equivalent to the Constraint set (15)–(17).
Two types of 2DCSP models are formulated by utilizing Proposition 2 as the
following P2 (a) and P2 (b), respectively:
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Application of Decision Science in Business and Management
Concept of non-overlapping Chen et al. Li and Chang Chen et al. [32] Li and Chang
[32] [34] [34]
where θ ¼ ⌈ log 2 f ⌉
Table 4.
Comparison of the four ways of expressing the 2DCSP.
P2 (a)
Min Y
s.t. (1), (2), (5), (12)–(14), (18) and (28)–(31),
where Y, xi , yi , λi,k ≥ 0 and ai, j , bi, j , ci, j , di, j , si , Q i,r ∈ f0, 1g for i, j ¼ 1, …, n, i < j,
k ¼ 1, …, f , and r ¼ 1, 2, …⌈ log 2 f ⌉.
Remark 7. P2 (a) requires n 2n þ ⌈ log 2 f ⌉ 1 binary variables and 5n2 þ 10n þ
4. Numerical examples
There are two examples modified from Tsai et al. [38]. The detail sizes of
rectangular items and materials are listed in Table 5. We implement a Java pro-
gram, which embedded an optimization package GUROBI (2011) as an MIP solver
1 (40, 69) 8 2 (25, 20), (16, 20), (15, 20), (14, 20), (20, 18), (15, 17), (30, 16),
(30, 14)
2 (25, 150) 12 2 (32, 24), (26, 20), (25, 20), (24, 20), (40, 18), (35, 17), (20, 16),
(18, 16), (38, 15), (50, 15), (18, 4), (25, 5)
Table 5.
Sizes of rectangular items and materials.
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A Global Method for a Two-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem in the Manufacturing Industry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89376
Table 6.
Experiment results of two problems.
Figure 1.
Visualization result of Example 1.
for solving the two examples with the four proposed models (P1 (a), P1 (b), P2 (a),
P2 (b)). The experimental tests were run on a PC equipped with an Intel® Core™
2 Duo CPU, 4GB RAM, and 32 bit Windows 7 operating system.
The two problems with the number of materials firstly estimated to be 2 (i.e.,
f ¼ 2) are solved by using the four models including P1(a), P1(b), P2(a), and P2
(b). Table 6 shows the experiment results of two problems. Both of Figures 1 and 2
depict the visualization solutions. In solving four models, we obtain the same
objective values of (83) and (293) in Problem 1 and Problem 2, respectively. The
results clearly indicate that solving P2(a) and P2(b) is much more
computationally efficient than that of P1(a) and P1(b). By observing the four
models, we know that both P2(a) and P2(b) use proposed approach to reduce
the numbers of binary variables. The results demonstrate that the adoption of a
smaller number of binary variables can enhance the solving efficiency in
solving 2DCSP.
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Application of Decision Science in Business and Management
Figure 2.
Visualization result of Example 2.
5. Conclusions
Author details
© 2020 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms
of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited.
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A Global Method for a Two-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem in the Manufacturing Industry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89376
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A Global Method for a Two-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem in the Manufacturing Industry
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.89376
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