Patent ID: 8798964

Claim:
A method comprising: obtaining, by a computer, information regarding physical attributes of boxes to be assigned to racks and of a set of available racks, the boxes including networked electronic devices; identifying, by the computer, particular racks to use, from the set of available racks, by solving a rack select optimization sub-problem using the obtained information; assigning, by the computer, each of the boxes to one of the particular racks by solving a rack assign optimization sub-problem using the obtained information, the rack assign optimization sub-problem being solved after the rack select optimization sub-problem has been solved; at least one of: (1) outputting an assignment solution to a user interface, the assignment solution including results of the identifying and the assigning, or (2) placing the boxes into the particular racks based on the assignment solution, wherein solving the rack assign optimization sub-problem includes: solving for a decision variable X (a,r) to determine if a box (a) is to be assigned to a rack (r), and solving for a decision variable X (b,s) to determine if a box (b) is to be assigned to a rack (s); and solving for a decision variable Z (a,r,b,s) which is a quadratic term X (a,r)*X (b,s).