Hello monks,

So I have a interesting optimization problem I need to do for work.. I'm going to use a stupid analogy to get rid of all the jargon ( its in chemicals manufacturing). Basically I just need some help getting in the right direction of what kind of operations or program I need to write.. I realize this description is not very clear now, but I will update it with code once I have a good idea of where to start

Basically heres the set-up: I have a massive ice-cream store that has X number of ice cream machines (think soft serve) and each machine has Y number of nozzles ( flavors). I need to solve for the minimum number of nozzles possible to meet the days demand. Each machine has a capacity Z, so you cant just put one nozzle for each flavor needed all on one machine because the machine couldnt meet the demand..

Right now things are setup inefficiently (ie., two chocolate nozzles are in use when the capacity on one machine is enough to handle all the choclate flavor on most days. The analysis process is to look at the data for the past six months and show what the setup was on a given day and also show what an optimal solution would have been for that day. This means I have the volume used per nozzle-flavor-machine combination.

At minimum if you have any demand for a flavor it needs to have at least one nozzle, and only the same flavor nozzles can be consolidated as long as the capacity of the machine allows for it on that day.? What is the right programatic technique to solve for the mininmum number of nozzles needed per day? Do I need to do a machine learning optimization technique or can I use min and max functions and HoHoA and for loops to accomplish this effectively?

. Any ideas, modules recs, or links greatly appreciated... I just need to know how to describe this 'class' of problem so I can read up and teach myself how to do it! thanks so much !!

In reply to Tricky chemicals optimization problem by Anonymous Monk

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