Optimization of the LCD optical film cutting problem

The manufacturing of liquid crystal display (LCD) plays an important role in electronics manufacturing industries, such as televisions, smart phones, pads, laptops, monitors and electronic appliances. Due to the fact that the cost of LCD’s film materials may reach 60–70% of the production cost, appropriate cutting schemes can lead to better raw material utilisation and thus enhance manufacturers’ profitability. Accordingly, the determination of the optimal production plan for cutting different-sized LCD optimal films with the designed cutting angles to fulfil the customers’ orders is a critical issue for the LCD industry. In the past, few studies integrated the different cutting allocation strategies into a synthetic decision. This study proposes a mathematical programming model for the two-stage cutting problem for LCD optical films to determine the optimal cutting allocation strategy with consideration of the costs of raw materials, processing and disposal during the manufacturing process. For large-scale problems in which the runtime for obtaining the optimal solution may grow exponentially as the problem size increases, a heuristic algorithm is also provided to obtain the approximate solution within a reasonable time. Finally, the results of the practical case shows that, compared with the existing fixed-angle cutting method, the proposed approach reduces the total cost by 6.2% due to the better material utilisation. In addition, the processing cost is also reduced due to a decrease in the required materials.