An Industrial Application of the 2-Dimensional Finite Bin Packing Problem

Abstract

The 2-Dimensional Finite Bin Packing Problem is a NP hard problem with it being observed in many of the process industries like woodcutting, textile manufacturing and steel industry. Here the scenario is a fiberglass mesh manufacturing industry, whose prime objective is to reduce material wastages due to cutting. We evaluate a few exact methods and a few heuristic techniques, which have been proposed to solve this problem. We further select Finite Best-Strip algorithm for implementation. We make modification to that technique to handle guillotine constraints. An after effect of this technique is observed in order tracking, which is reduced using k-way graph partitioning technique. The problem is tested for its performance by using datasets provided by the company. The results obtained are compared with the actual scenario. The experimental results show that this technique performs much better than the currently used technique and also a much better upper bound on the solution is observed when compared to previously known upper bounds for problems of these types. We also discuss on the future scope and enhancements possible for this technique to obtain better results.