This paper introduces the planar storage location assignment problem (PSLAP) that no research has attempted to mathematically solve. The PSLAP can be defined as the assignment of the inbound and outbound objects to the storage yard with aim of minimizing the number of obstructive object moves. The storage yard allows only planar moves of objects. The PSLAP usually occurs in the assembly block stockyard operations at a shipyard. This paper formulates the PSLAP using a mathematical programming model, but which belongs to the NP-hard problems category. Thus this paper utilizes an efficient genetic algorithm (GA) to solve the PSLAP for real-sized instances. The performance of the proposed mathematical programming model and developed GA is verified by a number of numerical experiments.