Cutting and Packing in Production and Distribution

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.