Developing an Industrial-Grade Heuristic Problem-Solving Procedure

An approach for developing heuristic problem-solving procedures for solving the types of operational problems with significant combinatorial components that commonly occur in production and distribution systems is demonstrated with a variation of the well-known one-dimensional cutting stock problem. The primary elements of the approach are identifying important solution characteristics, developing a sequential solution procedure, selecting the program control parameters, and developing a multiple-pass feature to obtain improved solutions.