Birth and Evolution of a Decision Support System in the Textile Manufacturing Field

We present the evolution of a Decision Support System that was developed for a company that produces high-tech fabrics. The project started in 2010 within a cooperation agreement between a public Italian university and the firm, initially addressing what was perceived as the main and more peculiar aspect of the decision process related with the production planning: namely the sheet booking process. We designed and developed a DSS that implemented a mathematical programming algorithm based on combinatorial optimization to solve the very peculiar variant of the cutting stock problem that could be used to model the decision process. The results of the usage of the DSS outperformed any estimation the company had expected from the project, leading not only to the automation of the decision process, but also to a large enhancement in the material usage rates. We present a short outline of the improvements achieved with this first tool. The positive results obtained with the first DSS led to two further evolutions of the tool: the former was developed 2 years later, while the latter is currently being developed.