THE OPTIMAL-DESIGN OF PERSONALIZED BANK CHECK PRINTING PLATES

Billions of personalized bank checks are used by individuals and organ izations each year. Before the checks can be used, they must be custom ized with the account number and customer's identification. In this pa per, we discuss the problem of designing the bank check printing plate s to minimize the total cost of printing the checks. The problem of as signing orders to plates may be complicated by customer requirements. The problem is initially formulated as an integer linear programing pr oblem. A heuristic procedure, developed because of the long solution t imes required by the I.P., is presented, and computational experience is discussed.