Novel global optimization for separated cutting stock problems

This separated cutting stock problem is a packaging of all rectangular pieces into a predefined size of material stocks using a minimum amount of these materials. It is similar to the trim-loss problem of subtracting the cost of a knife setup and adding the requirement of using the mini-mum number of material stocks. Current solving methods include the cutting stock problem, trim-loss problems, or assortment problems, which are not suitable for obtaining the global minimum number of material stocks with a predefined size to meet all the demanding smaller rectangles. We call this problem the separated cutting stock problem (SCSP). This paper proposes a novel method of identifying the global optimal solution for the SCSP. Numerical example demonstrates that the proposed method is more practical and efficient compared with other current approaches.