An introduction to the two‐dimensional rectangular cutting and packing problem

Abstract Cutting and packing problems have been widely studied in the last decades, mainly due to the variety of industrial applications where the problems emerge. This paper presents an overview of the solution approaches that have been proposed for solving two‐dimensional rectangular cutting and packing problems. The main emphasis of this work is on two distinct problems that belong to the cutting and packing problem family. The first problem aims to place onto an object the maximum‐profit subset of items, that is, output maximization, while the second one aims to place all the items using as few identical objects as possible, that is, input minimization. The objective of this paper is not to be exhaustive but to provide a solid grasp on two‐dimensional rectangular cutting and packing problems by describing their most important solution approaches.