OPTIMAL DIMENSIONS OF VIRGIN STOCK IN CUTTING GLASS TO ORDER

Glass cutting is a two-dimensional version of the cutting-stock problem. It involves two questions. One concerns the best way to cut a pane from a given plate. A less obvious question concerns selection of the plate from which the pane is cut. This leads to the question of what stock to order, before we even think of cutting it. We show that this latter question is more critical to economic cutting than the refinement of cutting procedures. We also present a method for selecting optimal stock sizes.