Scheduling of cutting-stock processes on multiple parallel machines

This work presents a new mathematical programming formulation for the probl em of scheduling cutting operations on multiple parallel slitting machines. A Mixed-Integer Linear Programming (MILD) model is proposed, solved to opt imality using standard techniques. A continuous time representation is used to avoid unnecessary time intervals and to limit the number of variables i n the formulation. One important feature of the model is the explicit treat ment of change-over times as an important part of a multiple objective cost function, which may be adapted to minimizing makespan, or total flow time, or any weighted combination of the two. An industrial case study from the paper-converting industry is presented to illustrate the applicability and efficiency of the proposed model.