Online Meat Cutting Optimisation

Abstract

Nortura, Norway s largest producer of meat, faces many challenges in their operation. One of these challenges is to decide which products to make out of each of the slaughtered animals. The meat from the animals can be made into different products, some more valuable than others. However, someone has to buy the products as well. It is therefore important to produce what the customers ask for. This thesis is about a computer system based on online optimisation which helps the meat cutters decide what to make. Two different meat cutting plants have been visited to specify how the system should work. This information has been used to develop a program which can give a recommendation for what to produce from carcasses during cutting. The system has been developed by considering both the attributes of the animals and the orders from the customers. The main focus of the thesis is how to deal with the fact that the attributes are only known for a small number of the animals, since they are measured right after slaughtering. A method has been made to calculate what should be made from the different carcasses, and this method has been realised with both exact and heuristic algorithms.