Improving a hardwood flooring cutting system through simulation and optimization

Hardwood flooring mills transform rough wood into several boards of smaller dimensions. For each piece of raw material, the system tries to select the cutting pattern that will generate the greatest value, taking into account the characteristics of the raw material. However, it is often necessary to choose less profitable cutting patterns in order to respect market constraints. This reduces production value, but it is the price to pay in order to satisfy the market. We propose an approach to improve production value. We first use simulation on a training set of virtual boards in order to generate a database associating cutting patterns to expected production value. Then, we use an optimization model to generate a production schedule maximizing the expected production value while satisfying production constraints. The approach is evaluated using industrial data. This allows recovering approximately 30 % of the value lost when using the original system.