Improving the long-term cutting plan on a furniture company: A Case Study.

Abstract

In this paper we tackle a two-dimensional cutting problem to optimize the use of raw material in a furniture company. Since the material used to produce pieces of furniture comes from a natural source, the plywood sheets may present defects that affect the total plywood that can be used in a single sheet. The heuristic presented in this research deals with these defects and present the best way to handle them. It also considers the use of the plywood sheets for the long term planning of the company, since usually purchases of raw material are done only at certain periods of time, and must last for several weeks.

Experimental results show how an intelligent cutting plan and selection of the plywood sheets reduce considerable the amount of raw material needed compared with the current operation of the company, and guarantees that the purchased sheets last during the planning period, regardless of the available area to cut pieces on each plywood.