Within such disciplines as Management Science, Informationand Computer Sciences, Engineering, Mathematics andOperations Research, problems of cutting and packing (C&P)ofconcrete or abstract objects appear under variousspecifications although they have essentially the samelogical structure. This book tries to give a description andcategorization of C&P-problems as a whole, making themcomparable in such a way as to clearly mark theirsimilarities and differences with respect to the underlyingplanning problems. The purpose is to create a basis ofknowledge which presents suggestions for...

Cutting and packing problems such as the cutting of sheet metal and the loading of contain ers or, in a more abstract sense, capital budgeting or assembly line balancing have been treated in scientific literature of various disciplines for about fifty years. Since the pioneer work of Kantorovich in 1939, which frrst appeared in the West in 1960, there has been a steadily growing number of contributions of increasing importance in this research area, particularly in the past decade. As of today more than 700 contributions exist even when applying a strict categorisation. Since comprehensive...