The slab-design problem in the steel industry

Planners in the steel industry design a set of steel slabs to satisfy the order book subject to constraints on (1) achieving a total designed weight for each order using multiples of an order-specific production size range, (2) minimum and maximum sizes for each slab, and (3) feasible assignments of multiple orders to the same slab. We developed a heuristic solution based on matchings and bin packing that a large steel plant uses daily in mill operations.