For decades, Cosentino has specialized in the production and distribution of innovative, high-value surfaces for the world of architecture and design. The company started as a small, family-owned marble manufacturer, and is now a multinational organization boasting five distinct brands that use innovative production processes to create unique spaces for both residential and commercial clients.
As the business has evolved, so have its processes for making decisions—from the way teams schedule sales visits, to the way they manage production.
By using mathematical optimization to guide their business decisions, Cosentino can avoid bottlenecks in their production lines, plan optimal routes for on-site commercial visits, and maximize their overall efficiency.
Cosentino sells its sustainable design materials in more than 120 countries. Because of this global reach, the company’s commercial teams make a lot of in-person visits across many regions.
“It’s a typical optimization problem, where we’re trying to identify areas with the most potential while considering time constraints, and go to places where the function is the maximum possible in terms of sales,” says Antonio Carrasco Pérez, Data Analytics Director at Cosentino.
With over 1,000 commercial team members, Cosentino needed to generate two-week plans for all representatives while also considering many restrictions , such as travel distances, client availability, and other priorities. This is something that wasn’t feasible with an open-source solver.
However, having used Gurobi in a previous role, Carrasco knew it was the right solver for the job. After securing buy-in, he and his team developed JARVIS, a Gurobi-powered solution that constantly runs throughout the day, gathering feedback from the market to suggest plans for sales visits.
As with any new system, the most challenging part is often ensuring adoption. But as Carrasco explains, this was made easy thanks to JARVIS’s smooth integration with Salesforce. With the push of a button, commercial team members have optimized routes that can help them maximize sales while saving time.
Another area where Cosentino’s teams must make critical decisions every day? Production.
Each Cosentino factory has multiple production lines that operate 24 hours per day, 365 days per year. To maintain this nonstop production, the company must be careful to avoid bottlenecks.
“We begin by preparing the raw materials, which then undergo multiple processing stages across many machines,” explains Carrasco. “In this process, depending on the quantity and type of products manufactured, there might be waiting periods—this is typically when bottlenecks can emerge.”
Using the Gurobi Optimizer, Cosentino is able to determine which products should be put in which production lines to prevent bottlenecks. This has significantly improved the overall efficiency of manual processes.
When it came to onboarding with Gurobi, Carrasco’s team found it easy to get up and running. They quickly noticed the difference from other solvers they had worked with in the past.
But more than a smooth user experience, Carrasco says Gurobi’s solver has helped his teams achieve peace of mind with results they can trust.
“If you’re a developer, and you have something that you aren’t sure is going to work—that might end up crashing—you can’t trust it. You go home worrying about what could happen if it fails,” he explains. “But with Gurobi, our teams can be confident; they can disconnect at the end of the day, and they can focus on solving problems, not worrying about whether the technology is reliable or not.”
And when obstacles do arise, Cosentino can count on Gurobi’s expert support team to help them find a solution.
“We had a problem where we couldn’t find the optimal solution. But we contacted [Gurobi’s] service center, sent them our files, and they helped us understand how to set the parameters to find the best solution—definitely better support than what I’ve experienced with some other software companies,” says Carrasco.
By leveraging Gurobi’s solver, Cosentino has significantly enhanced both its commercial team operations and manufacturing processes. Optimized visit schedules have improved efficiency for over 1,000 commercial team members, maximizing potential while reducing travel inefficiencies.
Meanwhile, production bottlenecks have been minimized through intelligent scheduling, ensuring seamless 24/7 operations across multiple production lines.
With Gurobi, Cosentino has not only improved decision-making, but also gained a reliable tool that enables teams to focus on strategic growth rather than troubleshooting technology.
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