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Cut to perfection

November 14, 2002

A tailor making a custom suit faces a similar problem to someone baking cookies: How best to arrange the individual sections of the pattern, for the sleeves, collar and front and back panels, on a length of fabric of a given width? When cutting out cookies, the rest of the rolled-out dough can be kneaded and reused - for the tailor, the offcut material is wasted. Industrial manufacturers of textile products can even less afford such waste and therefore try to find the optimum layout for the individual sections in the shortest possible time. Marker makers (“nesters”) face another disadvantage: Unlike bakers, they cannot turn individual sections arbitrarily, since the grain of the fabric and patterned designs have to be matched to the adjoining section. Software programs developed by the Fraunhofer Institute for Algorithms and Scientific Computing SCAI provide automated solutions for this and many other related problems. Dr. Ralf Heckmann, head of the optimization group, and team members Onno Garms and Mike Sch'�fer were awarded the Joseph-von-Fraunhofer Prize for the development of these programs and their industrial implementation.

The problem grows even more complex when manufacturing leather goods, as Dr. Heckmann knows from experience: “In this case, it is not simply a question of ‘can we cut the upholstery for an armchair or a pair of trousers from this cowhide?’, since the quality of natural products like leather and fur varies from piece to piece.” AutoNester-L software allows the nester to select the most durable or attractive sections to be used for the parts of the chair most exposed to wear. The program automatically skirts narrowly round any holes or major flaws in the hide. Although the prizewinners are not the only players in the market, field tests have proved that their programs are more flexible, generate less waste, and calculate at greater speed.

Other branches of industry can profit equally from this software. For example, the problems encountered by car manufacturers when stamping parts out of sheet metal are similar to those in textile and leather processing. But working in three dimensions gives rise to additional questions: How best to arrange engine and other parts in the restricted space of the engine compartment? How to achieve the highest possible density of electronic components on the circuit board? And, more generally: What is the fastest, most efficient and optimum way to distributing resources with a fixed limit, such as surface area, space, time, human or financial resources?

Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft

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