We consider discrete time Markov Decision Process (MDP) with finite state and action spaces under average reward optimality criterion. The decomposition theory, in Ross and Varadarajan [11], leads to a natural partition of the state space into strongly communicating classes and a set of states...

Sequential meta-heuristic implementations for the irregular stock-cutting problem have highlighted a number of common problems. The literature suggests a consensus that it is more efficient to allow configurations with overlapping pieces in the solution space and to penalise these in the...