How to Solve an Asset Storage Problem with Mathematical Programming | by Luis Fernando PÉREZ ARMAS, Ph.D. | Jul, 2024

Solving a two-dimensional assortment problem with Python and Gurobipy

Moving out is hard and, to be honest, very annoying — it kind of sucks. It’s especially challenging if you don’t have a new place to go. In such cases, you’ll need to rent temporary storage place for your belongings while you stay with friends, which can be pricy since storage places charge by the area used (And before you tell me that these kind of situations never happen, allow me to point out that this exact situation happened to one of my friends when she moved from France to Poland).

If moving out is already difficult for individuals, imagine the complexity of moving out and temporarily storing an entire factory. You might think, “Wow, Luis, this is crazy,” but such situations happen in real life. It happened to me, and unfortunately, I didn’t have the analytical tools to handle it at the time.

I used to work in the oil and gas service industry. During my last years there, business conditions in the country deteriorated rapidly and became volatile. For some services, the situation became untenable, leading management to cut losses and shut them down. One of the significant costs these services incurred was the rent for their operational facilities, so it was…