| Layout design problems have along and rich past in the literature of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research (IE/OR). Traditionally, this problem is analyzed in the context of manufacturing and distribution facilities, and many effective solution techniques have been developed. This dissertation focuses on the layout design of a retail facility, which differs from traditional manufacturing and warehouse layout design in many ways, including its revenue-based performance measures, highly variable customer profiles and shopping behavior, and customer service considerations, such as expected travel distance to complete a shopping tour. Surprisingly, despite the economic impact of the retail industry and the ubiquitousness of retail facilities, the layout design of a retail facility has received almost no attention in the IE/OR literature.; Although some guidelines are set by the retailing community for layout design of the retail facility, they do not provide an analytical approach for this problem. Having this motivation, we analyze the applicability of three distinct types of layouts, namely, grid, serpentine and hub-and-spoke layouts in retail facilities. We evaluate the performance of these layouts with respect to impulse purchase (unplanned purchase) revenue and customer travel distance.; The results show that impulse purchase revenue and customer travel distance depend on many factors, such as the type of layout used in the retail facility, length of the shopping list of the customers, product demand rates and product location strategies. As the length of the shopping list increases, travel distance and impulse purchase revenue increase. Furthermore, if shortcuts are allowed and the product categories have different impulse purchase rates, then it is possible to increase impulse purchase revenue and decrease customer travel distance simultaneously in the serpentine layout. In addition, for the serpentine layout, as the variability in the average purchase revenues of product categories increases, it is possible to increase impulse purchase revenue without increasing travel distance. Another key finding is the negative effect of the uncertainty in the shopping tour of the customer on impulse purchase revenue. The grid layout model shows that when there are multiple shopping route alternatives that the customers can use, impulse purchase revenue decreases. |
