Within Voortman, there is a department called LogicSteel. Here, they develop software that complements and controls our steel processing machines. One of the key components is the nesting algorithm, which focuses on how to cut steel profiles and products from long beams as efficiently as possible.

Traditionally, this is an optimization problem with a single objective: minimising material waste. In practice, however, customers want much more. For example: reusing leftover materials, avoiding manual rework, and grouping parts in a smart way. These objectives often conflict with each other, fundamentally changing the nature of the problem.

In this lunch lecture, Britt van Oosten will introduce how we approach this challenge using multi-objective nesting. In this lunch lecture.

Topics that will be covered are:

• What is nesting, and why is a single objective not enough?
• Pareto fronts: when “the best solution” becomes a set of solutions, and how do you choose?
• Evolutionary algorithms such as NSGA-II to find these solutions