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Efficient shelf-space allocation can provide retailers with a competitive edge. While there has been little study on this subject, there is great interest in improving product allocation in the retail industry. This paper examines a practicable linear allocation model for optimizing shelf-space allocation. It extends the model to address other requirements such as product groupings and nonlinear profit functions. Besides providing a network flow solution, we put forward a strategy that combines a strong local search with a metaheuristic approach to space allocation. This strategy is flexible and efficient, as it can address both linear and nonlinear problems of realistic size while achieving near-optimal solutions through easily implemented algorithms in reasonable timescales. It offers retailers opportunities for more efficient and profitable shelf management, as well as higher-quality planograms.retail, shelf allocation, metaheuristics

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Crossdocking studies have mostly been concerned with the physical layout of a crossdock or on a single crossdock. In this work, we study a network of crossdocks taking into consideration delivery and pickup time windows, warehouse capacities and inventory-handling costs. Because of the complexity of the problem, local search techniques are developed and used with simulated annealing and tabu search heuristics. Extensive experiments were conducted and results show that the heuristics outperform CPLEX, providing solutions in realistic timescales.