A combined approach to the solution to the general one-dimensional cutting stock problem

In this article a combined method for the solution to the general one-dimensional cutting stock problem (G1D-CSP) is proposed. The main characteristic of G1D-CSP lies in that all stock lengths can be different. The new approach combines two existing methods: sequential heuristic procedure (SHP) and branch-and-bound. The algorithm based on the proposed method leads to almost optimal solutions, which are substantially better than the solutions of known methods at the expense of slightly increased time complexity, which is still low. So, the new method is suitable for all sizes of the problem. A comparison with the SHP is presented.