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The best-fit heuristic is a simple yet powerful one-pass approach for the two-dimensional rectangular stock-cutting problem. It had achieved the best published results on a wide range of benchmark problems until the development of the approaches described in this paper. Here, we illustrate how improvements in solution quality can be achieved by the hybridisation of the best-fit heuristic together with simulated annealing and the bottom-left-fill algorithm. We compare and contrast the new hybrid approach with other approaches from the literature in terms of execution times and the quality of the solutions achieved. Using a range of standard benchmark problems from the literature, we demonstrate how the new approach achieves significantly better results than previously published methods on almost all of the problem instances. In addition, we provide results on 10 new benchmark problems to encourage further research and greater comparison between current and future methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new approach has been developed for the arrangement of rectangular pieces in plates for the guillotine-cutting problem as encountered in ship production and similar manufacturing processes. The algorithm is quite novel in the sense that instead of making preliminary specifications and ignoring all the alternative arrangements, as is the case for most of the current models, it selectively considers feasible arrangements by eliminating the majority of the probable arrangements that render the problem insolvable. Intermediate steps of the algorithm produce results which cannot be obtained through integer programming. Losses are distributed to the minimum number of plates. The number of arrangement plans is also minimized. Overall the solution of the problem has been drastically simplified to allow even hand calculations instead of long computer runs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]