2016 IEEE 8th International Conference on Intelligent Systems
On the Optimization of Material Usage in Power
Transformer Manufacturing
Georgios Chasparis1, Werner Zellinger1, Verena Haunschmid1, Markus Riedenbauer2, Reinhard Stumptner1
1
Software Competence Center Hagenberg
Hagenberg, Austria
georgios.chasparis@scch.at
werner.zellinger@scch.at
verena.haunschmid@scch.at
reinhard.stumptner@scch.at
Abstract—The manufacturing process of a power transformer
core constitutes a highly complex optimization problem. It
involves the optimal slitting of a set of available metal coils into
bands of desirable width. The optimization is a generalization of
the so-called cutting-stock problem, originally encountered in the
paper industry. It usually addresses the minimization of the
metal scrap or the minimization of the slit coils. Recently, though,
stricter noise control regulations and client specifications have
complicated further the optimization problem, increasing the
number of constraints and the potential objectives. Due to the
increased number of nonlinear constraints and objectives,
traditional approaches for addressing cutting-stock problems
(such as linear-programming relaxations) are no longer
appropriate. Furthermore, constraints reflecting properties of
the final product (such as noise constraints) may only be
estimated from the properties of the metal bands used. To this
end, this paper intends on providing a framework for addressing
such generalized cutting-stock problems within the scope of
stochastic-local search algorithms. The proposed optimization
framework provides flexibility in the number and nature of the
constraints and/or objectives. An additional learning system
provides the necessary predictions for constraints that depend on
properties of the final product. Comparison is performed with
existing software in an industrial site.
Keywords— cutting stock problem, manufacturing
I. INTRODUCTION
Power transformers are strategic nodes in every electrical
power supply network and there is a competitive international
market for producing these critical pieces of infrastructure.
Decades of optimization has resulted in transformers being
extremely energy efficient. However, eco-design measures
have forced an even closer look at the losses produced. The
primary classifications of losses produced by a transformer
include no-load, load and auxiliary losses. In recent years,
strict noise control regulations and client specifications have
also made the acoustic performance a major topic for
transformer manufacturers. Closely related to the losses, the
noise emitted by an energized transformer is generally
classified as the no-load noise, load current induced noise and
cooling equipment noise. Predicting the losses within the core
and the resulting sound levels at various guaranteed
measurement settings while still producing the transformer at
competitive prices is the aim of the algorithm described in this
978-1-5090-1354-8/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE
2
Siemens Transformers Austria
Weiz, Austria
markus.riedenbauer@siemens.com
paper. The production of a transformer core begins with the
slitting of incoming metal coils into sheets (or bands). These
sheets are then cut to the length and form which is required
within the transformer. At the end of the process the single
sheets are stacked to form the transformer core. The
optimization described in this paper focuses on the slitting of
the coils into sheets, which occurs once the material has been
assigned to various areas within the core.
The parameters to design a transformer depend on its type
and on investigations of the material used which are conducted
during stock intake measurements. Both no-load losses and
no-load noise are produced within the transformer core, which
consists of thousands of sheets of grain oriented electrical
steel. The electrical sheets within a single core range between
0.18mm and 0.3mm thick and have various widths and form a
combined mass of up to 200 tons. Until recently the selection
of materials of the transformer core was primarily based on
the grade of the material. However, the installation of an in-
house, patent registered measurement facility for the
inspection of incoming core materials provides additional data
which can be used to predict losses and noise levels within a
narrower range.
The approach of this paper will ensure the core sheets used
within a transformer are selected in a way to both optimize
production costs and meet all customer requirements.
Objective functions within the optimization algorithm can be
defined in order to find the best production solutions
depending on current stock holdings and the capacity
utilization of the slitting facility. Various parameters may also
be adjusted to minimize waste material and to attain the best
combination of cutter types and arrangements while meeting
the loss and noise level specifications.
The optimization problem constitutes a generalization of
the so-called cutting-stock problem, originally encountered in
the paper industry. It incorporates additional nonlinear
constraints/objectives due primarily to the final product
specifications (i.e., loss and noise specifications), as well as
geometric constraints imposed by the cutters. The goal of this
paper is to provide a framework for addressing such
generalizations of the cutting-stock problem within the scope
of stochastic-local search algorithms. The proposed
framework provides flexibility in the number and nature of the
constraints and/or objectives. It may incorporate a great
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variety of diversification strategies for improving the outcome
of the optimization, while it may naturally be parallelized.
Lastly, the optimization is augmented by a learning tool
responsible for estimating the properties of the final product
(loss and noise level) provided measurements of prior
products.
II. RELATED WORK
The optimization problem addressed in this paper
constitutes a generalization of the so-called cutting-stock
problem introduced in [1]. In a cutting-stock problem, a set of
rolls of material (or coils) is slit into a set of sheets (or bands)
of desired widths. The objective is to compute an assignment
of widths into the available coils so that the weight of the coils
used is minimized. Alternative objectives may be considered,
such as the weight of scrap generated from the slitting or the
overall slitting costs.
Reference [2] presented the original linear-programming-
based approach to the cutting stock problem and it was the
basis for further investigation in [3] and [4]. One of the main
disadvantages of linear-programming-based approaches is the
fact that it does not scale well with the number of optimization
parameters. Furthermore, such approaches are not applicable
to cutting-stock problems that involve nonlinear objectives
and/or constraints. Additional approaches include heuristic-
based approaches based on dynamic programming as
discussed in [1]. However, effectively implementing heuristic-
based approaches requires experts’ knowledge. A dynamic
programming approach is also employed for addressing a
cutting-stock problem specifically tailored for tree cutting
problems in [5].
• Learning
Data management involves the system and data
infrastructure which the coil slitting system is built upon. It
contains many heterogeneous data sources, e.g. coil stock,
information on built transformers, machine configuration, etc.
A single central data management instance keeps all necessary
information.
The Coil Slitting Optimization provides a slitting plan for
a defined transformer core. A slitting plan is an assignment of
band widths to the set of available coils (of possibly different
qualities/materials). The material qualities play a major role in
terms of the properties (losses or noise) of the built
transformer. Consequently, the coil slitting optimization
should aim at minimizing both the produced material waste
and the overall costs of a transformer. These costs include
failure in meeting certain specifications, material waste,
operational costs of slitting machines and production time.
More details on the coil slitting algorithm will be presented in
the forthcoming Section IV.
The Learning module aims at optimizing the predictions of
properties of the final product, e.g., the power losses of the
transformer, based on the used material qualities. It considers
the used materials (in terms of quality and amount) and the
measured properties (losses) of the transformer to train/adjust
the predictions. These predictions can directly be used by the
coil slitting optimization to increase the precision of predicted
losses and consequently the performance of the optimization
over time.
Figure 1 provides an overview of the overall system.

In [6] the authors describe a coil slitting system which is

closely related to the system presented in this contribution.
The system aims to slit metal coils into smaller widths
considering the minimization of the number of slitter setups
and the maximization of material utilization. The optimization
presented though is restricted to linear constraints.
This paper introduces instead a stochastic-local-search
algorithm [8] which builds upon the formulation presented in
[1]. The proposed approach addresses a generalized class of
cutting-stock problems where a) no explicit assumptions are
imposed regarding the form of the constraints, and b) the
design of such algorithms does not necessarily require experts’
knowledge. Thus, the proposed scheme is flexible enough to
incorporate a variety of linear/nonlinear constraints. In
addition, a learning tool is developed that allows prediction of Figure 1 System Overview
the final product properties and their incorporation into the
optimization problem (thus, establishing a loop from the final IV. COIL SLITTING OPTIMIZATION
product back to the optimization). The construction of power-transformer cores requires the
slitting of metal bands of desired widths out of a set of
III. SYSTEM OVERVIEW available rolls of metal or coils. An example of such coil
The coil slitting system which is described in this
slitting is depicted in Figure 2, where a coil of width is
contribution is an implementation and a major enhancement of
the coil slitting optimization approach introduced in [1]. The cut into a collection of desired bands of widths plus a
coil slitting system consists of the following modules: residual width that accounts for a necessary seaming.
• Data Management
• Coil Slitting Optimization

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Figure 2 Coil Slitting
The objective is to compute a combination of (desired)
widths that we should assign to each one of the available
coils so that an objective function is minimized. For
example, such objective function should guarantee low
production times, little garbage and optimal physical
properties of the transformer. The feasible solutions to such
optimization problem will be called slitting plans, which
corresponds to an assignment of the desired bands into the set
of available coils.
A. Optimization problem
The problem of computing optimal slitting plans can be
mathematically formulated as a multi-objective optimization
problem. It can be thought as a generalization of the well-
known cutting-stock problem. There are three main objectives:
(O1) Reducing production times: Intuitively, the more
coils are used to cut the metal sheets, the longer the cutting
machines are running. Therefore, the right choice of the metal
coils used for production, directly influences the possibility to
produce more transformers per year and therefore increases
the company’s income. We model this objective by a linear
function that takes a slitting plan , coded by an
integer sparse matrix, and returns the costs for the cutting
process.
(O2) Reducing machine adjustments: Manual machine
adjustments, especially between two sequentially slit coils,
require a high amount of working times. The linear objective
function computes the working times required for
the slitting plan and the corresponding optimal slitting
order of the used coils. Note that computing the optimal
slitting order requires solving a problem that can be reduced to
the traveling salesman problem and is therefore NP-complete.
(O3) Optimizing physical transformer properties: Physical
transformer properties directly depend on the quality of the
used metal coils for production. Machine learning methods are
used to model these dependencies resulting in the non-linear
objective function . candidate solution. For example, such alternative processing
The constraints for the multi-objective optimization
problem can be grouped into the following three categories:
(C1) Job constraints: These constraints describe the
validity of the slitting plan with respect to the possibility of
producing the transformer. These constraints are linear in the
entries of as sparse matrix.
(C2) Machine constraints: Different machine specific
properties, for example seam-width or cutter-margins, have to
be fulfilled. These constraints are realized by database queries
for valid cutter-patterns.
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(C3) Physical constraints: Besides handling of physical
transformer properties in objective function (O3), some
physical transformer properties should be fulfilled in any case.
Non-linear machine learning models are used to realize these
constraints.
Using the well-known weighted-sum approach for multi-
objective optimization problems, the overall problem can be
formulated by:
subject to constraints (C1), (C2) and (C3)
Please note, that this problem is a non-linear multi-
objective integer optimization problem with non-linear integer
constraints and NP-complete sub-problems. For this type of
problems no general and computationally efficient solving
algorithm exists.
B. Optimization algorithm
Given that the considered constraints are nonlinear,
traditional methods based on linear-programming relaxations
(as described in [7]) are not appropriate. Furthermore, the
large number of constraints dramatically reduces the set of
feasible solutions, thus making the search over optimal
solutions even harder.
To this end, stochastic-based methodologies have been
considered to address such complex optimization problems
(e.g., the algorithms discussed in [8]). Such methodologies
comprise a sequence of modification steps onto the current
candidate solution so that the overall objective function is
reduced. The main advantage is the ability to provide
suboptimal solutions within reasonable execution times. On
the other hand, the stochastic nature of these algorithms may
lead to performance variations.
Due to this performance variation, it is often necessary to
implement a set of diversification strategies that decrease the
probability of converging to local minima. For example, the
ability to periodically reprocess slitting plans from earlier
stages of the optimization constitutes one such diversification
strategy. Another diversification strategy is the ability to
experiment alternative processing paths starting from the same
paths can be generated through the use of parallelization of the
optimization (processing) steps.
We designed an optimization framework that intends on
providing the means for incorporating such diversification
strategies. The optimization framework consists of the
following main modules:
a) initialization,
b) optimization,
c) collector,
d) termination.

The role of the initialization module is the establishment of
slitting plans that satisfy at least the job constraints (C1). The
initialization phase is rather important in computing feasible
solutions, reducing the overall optimization time and also
improving the overall optimization performance. The output
of the initialization phase is a set of slitting plans (solution
pool), which is then used in the optimization module for
improving the objective cost.
The optimization module constitutes the core of the overall
optimization framework. Its role is the execution of
appropriate (local) modification steps (called operations) onto
the initially generated slitting plans, accompanied with
appropriate random perturbations. The role of these operations
is to search for a) slitting plans that satisfy all imposed
constraints (C1), (C2) and (C3), and b) slitting plans that
improve the overall cost. The following figure demonstrates
one such operation, namely swap operation where one band
assigned in a coil is exchanged with two bands assigned to
another coil.
Figure 3 Swap operation. Swaps one band from coil C_1 with two bands
of coil C_2. Normally, the length of a coil is up to 3⋅〖10〗^3 times the
coils width, i.e. around 3km.
Responsible for the execution of these improvement steps
and/or perturbations of the existing slitting plans are the
working units, which are combined into a sequential
optimization strategy, which we call a mutation. The
following figure schematically presents one such sequence of
optimization steps.
One of the main disadvantages of stochastic-local search
algorithms is the fact that convergence to local minima may
occur with high probability (see, e.g., [8], Section 5.2). This is
particularly evident as the number of constraints increases. To
this end, a careful design of so-called diversification strategies
is required. An example of such diversification strategies
includes the ability to reprocess candidate solutions from
earlier processing stages, which will increase the probability
of escaping from local minima. Such diversification strategies
can be designed within the collector module. In particular, it
comprises of the following functionalities: a) placing the
mutated slitting plan and some copies of it back to the solution
pool, b) placing the slitting plan into the storage pool, c)
Figure 4 Mutation. Sequential operations are used to modify a slitting plan in order to make it valid w.r.t. the constraints (C1), (C2) and (C3). After each level of
validity, local optimization heuristics are used to minimize the objective function.
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making copies of older slitting plans to the solution pool, and,
c) releasing the slitting plan. Part of the collector module is
also a termination criterion based on which the optimization
terminates according to the evolution of the cost of the
optimization.
Figure 5 provides an overall description of the
optimization and the collector module.
Figure 5 Evolutionary Strategy for coil slitting optimization. Please find the
details in the text.
Note that the operation steps over a slitting plan of the
solution pool can be performed independently from other
slitting plans. This observation naturally introduces a
parallelization pattern, where each mutation step can be
performed independently and in parallel with other mutation
steps. Such parallelization architecture is described in [9].
V. ADJUSTMENT OF CONSTRAINTS
As described in Section IV, in certain cases it is also
desirable that some physical properties of a produced
transformer are also optimized (O3) in some sense. For
example, one such (physical) property could be the no-load
losses exhibited by the produced transformer (as described in
Section I). In parallel, additional constraints may also be
imposed that depend on such physical properties (C3).
In case either objectives of the form (O3) or constraints of
the form (C3) are present in the (multi-objective) optimization
problem, the optimization requires a mapping (or formula) that
relates the desired property of the built transformer to the
properties of the metal sheets selected to build it. Since this
relation cannot be known a-priori, we designed a learning
framework, whose objective is to train such formulas using a)
measurements of this property collected from previously built
transformers, and b) properties of the metal sheets used to
build the transformer.
Figure 6 Learning architecture
The learning scheme accepts as inputs a) order data (SAP
files) including the properties of the metal sheets, and b)
measurement data, which includes measurements of the
property under investigation. The goal is to be able to improve
already existing prediction formulas (which incorporate expert
knowledge as well as prior trainings) with adjustment factors
that will reduce the prediction error. Such adjustment
factors may be functions of the transformer design
characteristics as well as the metal sheet properties. In
particular, the sequence of computations is as follows:
1. An already existing prediction formula is considered
for generating our base predictions (given the
specifics of the order data of a transformer). Such
predictions may incorporate prior expert knowledge
as well as prior trainings.
2. We introduce an adjustment factor to the current
predictions (summarized within function ). The
function is usually defined as a polynomial of
continuous variables of a transformer (e.g., its mass).
It may also accommodate dependence on discrete
variables of a transformer by simply considering
different polynomials for different values of the
discrete variable. The parameters of such polynomials
need to be estimated.
3. Given the prediction error of the adjusted
formula, we introduce an adaptive filter which
optimally adjusts (in a way to be determined) the
unknown parameters of the function . A schematic
of the adaptive adjustment of the parameters is shown
in Figure 6.
The adaptive filter chosen for this purpose is
exponentially-weighted regularized least squares,
implemented in a recursive manner. The objective function to
be minimized is:
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• is the correction factor to be trained (usually a
polynomial function of unknown parameters)
• is a forgetting factor
• is the regularization matrix
Note that in the absence of any existing prior prediction
formulas, the above setup can be used to generate prediction
models from scratch. Furthermore, the learning framework is
operated offline and not during the optimization process.
VI. RESULTS
We performed a set of experiments where several order
requirements (briefly, jobs) were fed into the optimization
algorithm. Optimization was performed only with respect to
the weight of the coils used for cutting the desirable bands. In
other words, any costs related to the slitting process were not
included in the objective function. Furthermore, in these
experiments, we did not include any objectives/constraints
related to a transformer physical property (as in O3 and C3),
thus the performance of the learning framework does not have
any impact on the optimization performance.
To evaluate the performance of the optimization scheme,
we introduced a normalization of the objective function (i.e., a
normalization of the coils’ weight). Such normalization is
necessary given that the weight of a transformer may
significantly differ across the different orders. In particular,
the evaluation criterion we used for a transformer is as
follows:
where corresponds to the weight of the
coils used to generate the metal bands necessary for building
the transformer , and corresponds to the
weight of the ordered transformer (which is defined by its
design). In other words, the above evaluation metric performs
a normalization of the coils weight with respect to the desired
transformers weight, i.e., it provides the weight of coils used
as a percentage of the assigned job weight.
Figure 5 provides a comparison of the introduced
stochastic-local search methodology (with parallelized
optimization steps) with an existing deterministic algorithm
currently employed in an industrial site. We used 8 different
job descriptions (each of which corresponding to different
transformers) and we ran the optimization algorithm 6 times
for each job in order to observe the variation in the assigned
coils weight. In each run, the optimization was let to run for 5
minutes, since solutions to these problems are usually required
within this time frame. The optimization was run in a
supercomputer, 20 core Intel Xeon CPU ES-2650 v3 @ 2.30
GHz. We evaluated the performance using different
parallelization degrees as shown in the horizontal axis of
Figure 5.
 An important observation is the fact that the performance
of the algorithm improves as the parallelization degree
increases (and for the fixed time duration of an optimization
run). This property is attributed to the fact that a higher
parallelization degree increases the processing rate and
therefore the probability of exploring better solutions. As
expected, the optimization performance should also saturate as
we increase the parallelization degree, given the fact that the
performance approaches the global optimum. In Figure 5,
comparison was performed with a deterministic-based
algorithm (red-colored line) currently employed in the
industrial site which does not admit any parallelization. An
improvement in the performance of at least 5% on average
was observed.
Figure 7: Performance evaluation vs parallelization degree.
VII. CONCLUSION AND FURTHER WORK
The optimization described in this work addresses the
problem of assigning a set of desired metal bands into a set of
available rolls of metal or coils. The problem constitutes a
generalization of the so-called cutting-stock problem which
originally appeared in the paper industry. The objective
usually corresponds to minimizing the amount of scrap or the
total weight of the slit coils. Additional objectives may include
the costs of the slitting machines, and the material usage (by
685
means of material quality and re-usability of rest bands).
Furthermore, nonlinear constraints are introduced reflecting
necessary specifications on the final product. Given the high
number of constraints and the existence of nonlinear
constraints, the optimization problem was addressed within
the scope of stochastic local search algorithms. The proposed
approach is rather flexible to incorporate alternative
diversification strategies for searching for the global optimum,
while it can naturally be parallelized. We finally presented
aggregate performance results of the proposed approach
compared to the performance of a deterministic algorithm
currently employed in the industrial site.
Acknowledgment
The research reported in this paper has been supported by
the Austrian Ministry for Transport, Innovation and
Technology, the Federal Ministry of Science, Research and
Economy, and the Province of Upper Austria in the frame of
the COMET center SCCH.
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