Patent US 7,574,281

A method and system for determining an array sequence of processing operations to maximize the efficiency of steel plate processing. Between two processing operations, a first sequence constraint based on a first attribute of each processing operation and a second sequence constraint based on a second attribute of each processing operation are defined. A system selects, as a cluster, at least one of processing operations having a common attribute value of the first attribute, and arranged in a sequence satisfying the second sequence constraint. The system regards the first sequence constraint as a sequence constraint between a plurality of clusters, and arranges the plurality of clusters in a sequence maximizing the efficiency of processing.