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Dr Diegel's interest in deckling began when Jimmy Boudreault, a former student, became manager of Vitrerie Baie St-Paul in Quebec. When Jimmy asked how to reduce waste, the reply was "That is simple!". Dr Diegel has worked on deckling problems ever since, his first program becoming operational in 1980 on a RadioShack, then Osborne Portable Computer.
Dr Diegel obtained his Ph. D. at the University of Oregon in 1962. Since then he has taught at the University of Otago in Dunedin, at Lancaster in Bailrigg and at South Alabama in Mobile. He was Professor of Decision Science at the University of Quebec in Chicoutimi from 1972 to 1982, then at the Univerity of Natal in Durban until his retirement in 1995. Papers appeared in Management Science, Decision Sciences, ORiON, Production and Inventory Control, European Journal of Operational Research and elsewhere, or were read at conferences in Australia, North America, Germany, France and Greece. Four books appeared in French, on statistics in the analysis of opinion polls, decision making, and on FORTRAN programming. He has developped programs for finding optimal patterns in cutting glass (two dimensions), as well as for cutting reels and cartons. Such programs were implemented at Mondi Paper in Richards Bay, Felixton and Durban, Hunyani Pulp and Paper in Norton and Harare, Zimbabwe, and elsewhere. He offered Effective use of your personal computer at the University of Natal as a pioneering course through Adult Education as early as 1983. Cutplan and related programs have been working since 1985. People who contributed ideas over the years are: Sias van Schalkwyk at Mondi Kraft, Laurie Watermeier and Frances Pickering at Hunyani, Drummond Gow at Sappi and Edouard Montocchio at Mondi Paper. Edouard wrote Cutworks for DOS in 1992 while the Windows version comes from Dr. Olaf Diegel in 2002.
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