How to Solve an Asset Storage Problem with Mathematical Programming
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 logical to stop using them to save on rent. However, shutting down a facility meant closing entire workshops and moving all the assets to a storage location. Remember, this is oil and gas – these assets are highly sophisticated tools worth millions of dollars. Just some of the spare parts of these assets were worth thousands and were easy targets for theft and black market sales. So, the challenge was not only to move the assets but also to store them temporarily and, most importantly, safeguard them.
My manager, a brilliant guy, approached me with this problem. He told me we were going to bring all the assets of an entire service division into the main facilities and store them in a secure, restricted area. Since these assets were so valuable, we wanted to avoid any possibility of theft or damage. For instance, some specialized trucks had parts that cost thousands of dollars, and given the country's conditions, the temptation for theft was high. Thus, no one should enter the safe area unless authorized by management. To enforce this rule, we planned to enclose the area with an electric fence ⚡ and infrared sensors connected to an alarm
