Cutting and Packing in Production and Distribution : A Typology and Bibliography

This study attempts to provide a description and categorization for all problems of cutting and packing concrete or abstract objects. The aim is to make all problems comparable in such a way as to clearly mark the similarities and differences with respect to underlying planning considerations.

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 selection,development and utilization of appropriate solutionapproaches. For this purpose the book- creates a consistent terminology for C&P problems,- developes anappropriate characterization scheme of 34 properties, and- typifies more than 300 real C&P-problems published in the German and English literature. Moreover, the book contains a collection of nearly 700German and English references on C&P-problems.