Leonid Kantorovich, the only domestic winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, in the late 1940s proposed to the Leningrad Wagon Building Plant to use mathematical methods to optimize the disclosure of steel sheets. After their introduction, the production of products significantly increased, but soon the management of the factory received a party excuse and stopped cooperating with mathematicians. It turned out that, firstly, due to the sharp reduction of steel waste, the plant did not fulfill the plan for the delivery of the debris. Secondly, the plan for the next year has been increased by the higher instances, but the plant has not been able to ensure this increase due to the full optimization of the process already taking place.