Kiln Planning, A Cutting Stock Approach

Abstract

Capacity planning of tunnel kiln in ceramic/porcelain industry has become more interesting as the energy saving issues is growing concern of operations management. The planning model developed propose the optimal Kiln layout from a finite number of demand items ( n) and a theoretically infinite set of base materials or stocks while keeping uniform heat transfer and mass adjustment. A layout generation algorithm is proposed to select possible feasible layouts for round items with diameters of that minimize space/capacity requirement. A generalized problem for packaging of different round items of different size with a finite number of base rectangles Kiln wagon plates is also proposed.

Keywords: cutting stock problem, Pattern generation, Integer programming, Kiln planning, Capacity planning

JEL Classification: C61, D24