Planning the Cutting of Photographic Color Paper Rolls for Kodak (Australasia) Pty. Ltd.

At Kodak (Australasia) I addressed the problem of diagramming small customer rolls from large bulk rolls of expensive photographic color paper. Certain characteristics of the problem led to a new innovative approach, for example, the need for the majority of customer rolls to be splice free and a lack of homogeneity in the raw material. I based my system on a two-phase integer programming approach. At phase 1, a suite of integer models are solved using a “look-ahead” strategy to generate a set of alternatives for phase 2 to select from. Since, implementation diagramming waste has improved by over 50 percent, yielding benefits in excess of $2 million in the first year. Other benefits include increased productivity of the cutting machine, less time devoted to diagramming, an increased ability to move to a shorter planning horizon, and the capability to better match supply to demand.