Project Title: Automatic Allocation of Shelf Space in Small Retail Shops
Student: Fathima Shazna Marikar
Course: Course: BSc Hons Computer Science	 and Management
	
Abstract:
Shelf space allocation is the problem of arranging products on shelf. 
An arrangement (the graphical form is known as a planogram) can be 
created based on various criteria, such as product and shelf 
profitability. The objective of shelf space allocation is usually 
to maximize profits. Sometimes other objectives may exist, such as 
to improve stock control and improve customer satisfaction. The aim 
of this dissertation is to be able to automate the shelf space 
allocation process for a shop and in the process produce an efficient 
arrangement represented as a planogram. In order to provide a new 
angle to the research, model design and algorithm development was 
done specifically for a small shop since most previous research was 
based on large retailers. In addition to that, real data was collected 
from a known supermarket and was used in the algorithm development 
and testing. At the outset, previous work based on shelf space 
allocation was carefully studied. Secondly, a model and local search 
heuristic were designed and constructed based on input from the 
supermarket. Next, an interface was designed to represent the results 
produced by the heuristic. Finally, thorough testing was carried out 
using two problem sets, small and large, consisting of approximately 
100 and 1000 products respectively. The results obtained were mostly 
as expected and very appropriate. In both problems, the profits 
obtained from the initial solution were almost doubled after the use 
of the local search, and the time taken to construct the best 
arrangement took about 4 hours for the large problem. This shows that 
an efficient arrangement for a small shop can quite easily be 
constructed. This was the main goal of the project and I believe this 
was successfully achieved. In addition, the software produced as a 
result of this project could easily be put into use in a small retailer 
with some minor modifications.