Question. When I use the Destacking optimiser for Automatic destacking I sometimes get worse waste and changing parameter values for costs often has very little effect. What is wrong?
Answer. Nothing is wrong. Automatic destacking often restricts the number of different part sizes in a pattern to 2 or 3 so that the stations can be loaded correctly. This is a big restriction on the type of patterns that the optimiser can generate which often overwhelms any other effects such as parameter changes and you may sometimes get worse waste. What you are doing is trading off the cost of some extra waste against the savings made through faster, simpler and labour saving destacking systems.
You also see another effect when you impose a big restriction on the patterns because this makes it more difficult for the optimiser to find a good solution (there are less good solutions to find) and so they can perform a bit less predictably for this reason.
