Lumber Cost Minimization through Optimum Grade-Mix Selection

Rough mills process kiln-dried lumber into components for the furniture and wood products industries, Lumber is a significant portion of total rough mill costs and lumber quality can have a serious impact on mill productivity. Lower quality lumber is less expensive yet is harder to process. Higher quality lumber is more expensive yet easier to process. The problem of balancing lumber cost with production capacity to yield the minimal total cost is referred to as the least-cost lumber grade mix problem. Several models to this problem have been proposed over the past decades, most of them relying on linear programming to find the optimum solution. However, research conducted for this project showed that the linearity assumption underlying these solutions is violated in more than 90 percent of the cases. Therefore, a newsolution is needed.