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Shopping center design using a facility layout assignment approach

Conference Paper · December 2014

DOI: 10.1109/INFOS.2014.7036689

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 The 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS2014) – 15-17 December
Operations Research and Decision Support Track

Shopping center design using a facility layout

assignment approach
Sherif A. Fahmy Bader A. Alablani1, Tamer F. Abdelmaguid2
Currently- Department of Industrial Engineering Department of Mechanical Design and Production
American University of the Middle East, Egaila, Kuwait Cairo University
On leave- Department of Mechanical Design and Production Giza, Egypt
Cairo University, Giza, Egypt 1
[email protected]
[email protected] 2
[email protected]

Abstract— In this paper, a study of the problem of of the center. Shops (entities) are assigned to available
shopping center layout design is presented. Assignment of locations in the center in a way that ensures foot-traffic is
shops to locations in a shopping center should be performed in evenly distributed across all shopping center areas. Thus,
a way that ensures balance in the distribution of flow across all increasing rent returns, profitability, and success of the
shopping center areas. This can lead to the success of the shopping center.
shopping center, and consequently raise its rent return. This
study proposes a facility layout assignment model for shopping A. Shopping centers
centers with the objective of maximizing flow capturing in each There are three physical configurations of shopping
location and balancing it across all shopping center areas. Flow centers. First is the open air center, where all shop entrances
capturing by a given location is controlled by the power of are on open air space. Second is the mall, which is an
attraction (weight) of the shop assigned to it, and is affected by enclosed space, where all shops entrances are facing the
the flow at nearby locations more than flow at more distant
interior. The third type is the hybrid center, which combines
locations. The model also calculates the flow in each area in the
center as a combination of the flows at locations that belong to
features of the two previous configurations. The first two
that area. The model is tested on a number of randomly configurations are further classified into eight types
generated problems, and the optimum layout is found for each according to size and goods sold. For malls, there are the
generated example. regional center and the super-regional center. For open air
centers, there are the neighborhood center, the community
Keywords— facility layout; flow capturing; shopping center center, the power center, the theme/festival center, the outlet
design center, and the lifestyle center.
I. INTRODUCTION Shopping centers have many design issues, one of which
is the financial aspects of the design [2]; commitment of
Shopping centers are widely spread across the world, shopping center owners/developers to financial return over a
and are hotspots that attract different demographics to spend long period of time. Given this long term commitment, there
quality time, perform all kinds of activities, or to perform all is greater interest in ensuring profitability on an ongoing
kinds of purchases. Shopping centers simulates the basis, which in turn encourages high quality design. Another
complexity and vitality of a city center without the noise, design issue to consider is the financial viability of the
dirt, and confusion [1]. Victor Gruen, the architect of the center. Shopping centers are affected by changes in the
first shopping center, proposed the center as the basic unit of market, including level of competition. Although
urban planning, where he designed the suburban center to be competition risk is acknowledged in feasibility analysis, but
the nucleus of subsequent developments. Shopping centers changes to the retail hierarchy resulting from poor planning
were introduced not only as retail environment, but also as decisions is a risk that cannot be predicted. Given the
public spaces that permit access to all members of the significant amounts of capital required to develop and
community. The idea of the shopping center evolved from redevelop a shopping center, the developer needs to be
the classical open market spaces as shopping and confident that there is no unforeseen threat to achieving an
communication spaces, through department and chain appropriate return on their investment.
stores, reaching the modern environmentally controlled
form of that shopping space called ‘mall’. Considering these two issues gives rise to the need to
develop shopping center layouts that can ensure, among
This study intends to employ engineering theories and other requirements, that facility entities will receive
practices in a new application; namely layout design for maximum customer flow to increase profitability.
shopping centers. It discusses the facility layout problem for
a shopping center as a service facility, with the objective of
maximizing the average flow across different areas (blocks)

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 The 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS2014) – 15-17 December
Operations Research and Decision Support Track

B. Facility layout problem

Facility layout planning plays a crucial role in the
success and profitability of any organization; an effective
layout can minimize costs substantially, which leads to
improvement in overall performance. A facility is an entity
that facilitates the performance of any task, and the facility
layout is the arrangement of everything needed for
production of goods or delivery of services in that facility
[3]. As per [4], “Layouts are not only concerned with
improved utilization of buildings and land but are very
much concerned with increasing sales. In the retail
environment, layouts must be customer focused and
displays should attract the attention of the purchasing
public.”
The common approach for solving the facility layout
problem is to assign entities to locations with the objective Fig. 1. Shopping mall dumb-bell concept [6]
of minimizing the material handling distances/costs. This
has been done by evaluating the distances/trips to/from An analysis was performed in [6] on a selected sample
different entities at the assigned locations. Other facility of shopping malls for a comparative study of the layout
layout models have also considered the objective of configuration. The results showed that the number of
maximizing the flow through facility entities. shoppers differs significantly between main malls and side
C. Maximum flow capturing problem malls (Fig. 1). Results also showed that the assignments of
different shops to available locations affect the rate of foot-
The maximum flow capturing problem discusses the traffic across the mall. Furthermore, it was concluded that
flow in a system, where entities should capture portions of there is a strong relationship between the layout
that flow [5]. The portion of flow that each entity captures configuration and the distribution of foot-traffic across the
depends on its weight, which is interpreted as the power to mall.
capture flow. Accordingly, the maximum flow capturing
problem can be utilized in shopping center location Brown [7] introduced a study that discusses functionality
assignment problems. The objective in this case would be to problems of real estate and the relationship with
ensure that each assigned shop’s share of customer visits configuration. Space syntax was presented as a way to
(flow) is maximized, while maintaining the flow balance describe the configuration of a failed shopping mall due to
across different areas (blocks) that accommodate these poor design, and was represented by a mathematical
shops. network. The study compared the failed mall with another
nearby mall, and it showed that it is not important how big
II. LITERATURE REVIEW the mall is, but what matters is how the public area of the
Fong [6] presented a configuration (morphological) mall makes the goods sold more accessible to shoppers.
analysis of shopping malls and a study of the extent to With equal effort, shoppers would access more store
which location of attractors affects movement through the entrances in the nearby mall than the failed one. Also, mall
mall. The author discussed the idea of a mall that offers entrances allowed shoppers deep into the nearby mall, and
unique shopping experience at several stores under one roof kept them on the edges at the failed one. The author also
along with entertainment tools, and that the idea of the discussed the importance of store entrance being on a core
shopping mall was derived from the city center. Shopping space (potential high movement rates) or a fringe space (less
malls usually follow the dumb-bell concept (Fig. 1), in movement rate where most vacant stores are found) for the
which large stores (anchors) are placed at the ends of the success of the store. There is a common tendency to locate
mall to work as customer magnets. This creates an artificial large anchor stores in fringe areas to benefit from their high
flow between anchors, producing flow at the smaller stores, market capability. It was emphasized that the design of the
and simulating the natural movement in the streets. In failed mall made each store only represent itself as if it is a
theory, in a shopping mall, all locations are good. The stand-alone store not part of a mall, disabling the concept
shopping mall owner's main concern is usually to optimize that the foot-traffic at each store will inevitably generate
rent return by generating equally distributed foot-traffic for foot-traffic at surrounding stores. In other words, separating
all shops in the mall, not only those who can afford mall areas lead to mall failure.
exceptional locations. Accordingly, the layout design Yin, Xu, and Ng [8] discussed the relation between shop
process should take this into consideration to achieve a size, tenant type, and location in the shopping mall. It was
tenant mix that leads to the success of the center by ensuring found that the vertical expansion in mall size, by increasing
maximum benefit for all occupants. the number of floors, increases owner concern if shoppers
will reach higher floors or not. The author classified the
shops into non-impulse trades that consumers will usually

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 The 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS2014) – 15-17 December
Operations Research and Decision Support Track

head to with a plan of specific purchases, and impulse trades the classical quadratic assignment problem (QAP). The
that consumers visit only as a last minute decision to approach depends on assigning distances to pairs of
purchase a product. The results showed that more non- departments and formulating a minimum cost network
impulse trades are found at higher levels in the shopping problem. The formulation takes advantage of network
mall. The study concluded that shoppers can be encouraged theory and algorithms. This distance assignment problem
to go to the upper floors by placing shops of non-impulse (DAP) uses the flow in the network to represent the distance
trade and anchors at the upper floors. assigned to department pairs. The study provides a solution
algorithm consisting of three phases. In the first phase, the
Fong [9] discussed suitable locations of different shop distance parameters between departments are determined,
categories (tenant mix) according to type of shop activities where in the second phase these distances are optimized.
and goods inside the shopping center. He enumerates rules The third phase is concerned with interpreting the obtained
to assign certain shops to certain locations on the shopping optimal distances into facility layout assignments.
center layout, such as fashion shops to be located in main
mall and service stores to be in less attractive locations. The Solimanpur and Jafari [13] discussed the concept of two-
author claims that managers and decision makers pay dimensional layout, where the problem is concerned with
attention to placement of anchors and major shops, leaving the arrangement of manufacturing facilities into different
the decision about non-anchors and less important shops to layout patterns taking into consideration some factors, such
the leasing agents, which may arise some problems in the as machine dimensions and capacity. The layout is
matter of shops placement rules. The objective of the study optimized according to distance or cost minimization
is to test the locations of each category of stores in order to measures. The study uses a nonlinear mixed integer
define certain “general rules” that apply to most of the programming model with a total distance minimization
sample shopping centers. The question asked is should objective, in a two-dimensional layout arrangement. The
stores of a certain category be gathered beside each other, or model takes into consideration the required clearance
should they be separated through the whole shopping center between machines.
layout. After studying different store types in seven
Amaral [14] discussed the single row facility layout
shopping malls, it is concluded that there are no certain
problem (SRFLP), where departments are assigned on a line
location rules that stores placement follow. The study
or one side of a certain path, with the objective of
suggests deciding on stores location by simulating the
minimizing the weighted sum of the distances between
dynamics of ecology, study of organism interactions, as
departments. The distances between departments in the
studying the effect of a store location on every other store
facility are measured between their centers. The author also
(store-to-store interactions). The method highlights that
discussed the special case of the SRFLP, the linear ordering
competing stores can be placed apart and stores of different
problem (LOP), where the distance between all departments
types of activities can be placed near each other. The author
is unit length. The study presents a new mixed-integer linear
concludes that choosing stores’ locations is a skill of the
programming model for the problem to facilitate a more
shopping mall manager more than being a scientific
efficient solution.
decision.
Hassan [15] discussed the problem of layout design and
Kusiak and Heragu [10] presented a survey of the
how it affects the pedestrian flow. He argued that previous
different formulations and solution algorithms that can be
work either studied the layout design or pedestrian flow, but
used to solve the facility layout problem in manufacturing
not both problems simultaneously. The author used
systems. The study enumerates the types of models that can
simulation tools to study different layout designs and the
be utilized and provided a summary of each. It also
resulting effect on pedestrian flow. The study focused on
classified the solution algorithms into optimal and sub-
flow in normal situations not congestion in panic situations.
optimal algorithms and showed that facility layout problems
The author also discussed the effect of appropriate design in
are hard to solve with optimal algorithms because of time
a shopping mall on the profit. It was concluded that a good
constraints. A comparison between twelve heuristic
design will produce smooth flow and maximize the flow
algorithms for eight test problems was included, and an
across the layout spaces.
analysis of solution quality and computation time was
provided. Hua, Cheng, and Wang [16] presented the maximum
capture problem (MAXCAP), which is concerned with
Feizollahi and Feyzollahi [11] discussed the classical
locating new stores in a competitive market, with the
quadratic assignment problem (QAP), in which a set of
objective of maximizing the market share for the new stores,
facilities are assigned to a set of locations in a way that
which is in turn captured from other competitors’ share. The
achieve the required flow between facility pairs and
authors listed previous studies that extend the MAXCAP
minimizes cost of material handling. The study discussed
problem with the assumption that stores might have equal or
the QAP problem with uncertain flow of material. The
different weights, or with the assumption that competitors
authors introduced a robust solution for a set of uncertain
will react to the new entry to the market. The model
flow possibilities.
objective is to maximize total market share captured from
In [12], Rosenblatand and Golany proposed a new competitors with respect to total cost, including fixed and
approach for the facility layout problem other than solving transportation costs. The authors emphasized the practical

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 The 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS2014) – 15-17 December
Operations Research and Decision Support Track

superiority of the concept of maximizing capture per unit work as restaurants or cafes. This reflects the real practice in
cost over maximizing profit. which some entities are desired to be assigned to certain
locations while others can be assigned freely to any location
Hodgason, Rosing, Leontien, and Storrier [17] explained but under the objective of maximizing flow. These entities
the flow capturing location-allocation model by studying are constrained by certain required features such as size,
traffic in Edmonton, Canada. The authors provided a new certain facilities, or location on a view. Attraction points in
model to find locations for some facilities with the objective the layout have a high weight as their attraction power is
of maximizing the flow passing by these facilities. The high, and they are different from special locations-entities as
demand at the facilities is expressed as weights at the nodes, special locations-entities can be of any category of weight.
but not for other type of facilities where the demand is the The objective is to ensure balanced foot-traffic across the
traffic flowing between origins and destinations, like whole facility, by maximizing the flow of customers
convenience stores, gas stations, and bank ATMs. The captured by each entity in its assigned location. The layout
authors used three solution procedures; for small problems, is separated into areas (blocks), where attraction points work
an exact solution procedure was used. A vertex substitution as magnet to visitors, creating flow through the whole
procedure was used to solve the medium-sized problems, block, resulting in flow across other smaller stores. At the
and for large problems, they used a greedy heuristic same time the average flow of all blocks is maximized.
procedure.
The model exploits the fact that each entity assignment
Jun, and Min [5] presented the allocation theory in the to a location affects the flow in the whole facility. Thus,
flow capturing location-allocation problem (FCLP), which each entity is assigned a weight we that is related to its
discusses assigning facilities to locations depending on the power of attraction (high, medium, or low), and is deduced
number of customers(or flow) passing through the system. from market research on the effect of different entity types.
An example is locating gas stations or bank ATMs with the A location i’s share of customer flow is measured by the
objective of capturing the maximum number of customers location flow factor fi. fi is measured in reference to the
that can be served by these facilities. The authors added to weight of the entity assigned to it and the weights of entities
the FCLP some aspects; flow changes with time interval, assigned to all other locations, and the distance from these
facilities are capacitated, and flow can be partitioned. The locations to location i. Accordingly, an empty location’s
authors used the Max-min ant algorithm, and it resulted in share of flow is determined only by its distance from other
improvement in the results and time required to find a assigned locations that capture flow by themselves and
solution. share it with other locations, such that an assigned location’s
A major problem in shopping malls is when the foot- flow effect (ability to induce flow) is higher on nearby
traffic rate is different from one area to another, which locations and less on farther locations. A flow factor Fb is
affects the selling power of shops and the rent return to the also defined for each block b as the sum of location flow
owner, and hence the success of the mall. Previous research factors of all locations in block b. The model minimizes the
on shopping malls handled this problem from a qualitative maximum difference between block flow factors to ensure
perspective. This study uses the essence of the facility balanced flow across the whole facility. The following
layout problem, and considers the assignment of shops to assumptions are made:
mall locations with the objective of evenly distributing the
• Bi-directional flow is allowed.
customer flow among all areas (blocks) of the mall. The
study uses the facility layout assignment approach and the • All locations have a unit area and the center point of a
flow capturing concept, to solve the facility layout problem location is used as reference point to that location.
for the mall shops.
• The distance from a location to itself is set to one not
III. PROBLEM FORMULATION zero to avoid dividing by zero when calculating the
Considering an already designed shopping mall, it is flow factor.
required to assign stores (entities) to available locations. The • Adjacent locations are equally spaced.
objective is to ensure that all areas of the mall will have an
appropriate share of flow (customers’ visits), and that all
locations are desirable, in order to increase rent returns, and
thereby profitability and success of the shopping center.
The layout is divided into occupied locations and
available (free) locations. An example of such arrangement
is shown in Fig. 2. The occupied locations are usually
allocated for entrances and exits, restrooms, and attraction
points (food court, cinema, famous brand stores, etc.).The
available locations are to be assigned to shops, categorized
into high, medium, and low according to their attraction
power. In addition, there are locations that can only be
assigned to special entities, such as locations that can only

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 The 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS2014) – 15-17 December
Operations Research and Decision Support Track

Model:
Min . Z = Fmax − Fmin

Fb = ∑f j
∀b = 1, … , m (1)
j ∈L b

Fmax = max ( Fb ) (2)

Fmin = min ( Fb ) (3)

n l
we
Fig. 2. Layout of a functioning shopping mall, illustrating occupied and f j = ∑∑x ei ∀j = 1, … ., l (4)
available locations (www.eagleridgemall.com) e =1 i =1 d ij
A. Mathematical model n

Indices: ∑x ei
= 1∀i = 1, … , l (5)
e =1
b: block
l
i, j: locations
∑x ei
= 1∀e = 1, … , n (6)
e: entity i =1

Sets:
∑∑x ei
=r (7)
L: set of all locations {1,…..,ℓ} i ∈LS e ∈SS

Lb: set of locations in block b ∑∑x ei

=k (8)
i ∈LA e ∈SA
S: set of all entities {1,…., n}
LA: set of attraction point locations LA⊂ L
x ei = {0,1} , Fb , f j ≥ 0
LS: set of special locations LS⊂ L
SA: set of attraction point entities SA⊂ S The objective function minimizes the difference between
the maximum block flow factor Fmax and the minimum one
SS: set of special entities SS⊂ S Fmin, thus distributing flow across all blocks. Constraint set
(1) defines Fb the flow factor of block b, as the summation
Parameters:
of all flow factors of all locations in that block. Constraint
m: number of blocks sets (2) and (3) identify the maximum and minimum block
flow factors, respectively, for objective function
n: number of entities calculations. Constraint set (4) calculates the flow factor fj
ℓ: number of locations of each location j as the summation of weights of other
entities divided by their distances from location j; djj is
di,j: distance between location i and location j assumed to be equal to one (minimum distance). Constraint
we: weight (power of attraction) of entity e set (5) ensures that each location is assigned to only one
entity, and constraint set (6) ensures that each entity is
r: number of special entities assigned to only one location. Constraint (7) ensures the
k: number of attraction points assignment of entities in the special entities set to locations
in the special locations set only. Finally, constraint (8)
Variables: ensures that only attraction point entities are assigned to
xei: 1 if entity e is assigned to location i; 0 otherwise attraction point locations.

fi: flow factor of location i IV. ILLUSTRATION AND ANALYSIS

Fb: flow factor of block b In this section, the proposed model is tested on 3
generated instances of the problem. Three size categories
are assumed for the problem; small (1-10 locations/entities),
medium (11-30 locations/entities), and large (more than 30
locations /entities). The generated instances have the
following sizes; small (6 locations/entities in 2 blocks),

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 The 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS2014) – 15-17 December
Operations Research and Decision Support Track

medium (20 locations/entities in 5 blocks), and large (49

locations/entities in 7 blocks). Entities weights are
categorized into 4 classes; low ranges from 0 to 30, medium
ranges from 30 to 60, high ranges from 60 to 80, and
attraction point ranges from 80 to 100. The examples are
solved using LINGO 11 on a 2.20 GHz processor and 4GB
RAM computer, and the results are as shown in Table 1.

TABLE I. SOLUTIONS FOR THE GENERATED EXAMPLES

Generated Number of Objective Run time

example locations function value hh:mm:ss
1 6 19.39 00:00:01

2 20 58.22 00:03:11

3 49 51.87 00:13:12

Fig. 5. Optimal layout for Example 3

For example 1, six-entities {A,B,C,D,E,F} are assigned
to six locations {1,2,3,4,5,6}. It is assumed that the mall is The model formulation proves to be efficient in
divided into two blocks, where each has three locations. distributing flow through the mall areas, under the assumed
There is one special location {2} and one special entity {C}, special and attraction point restrictions, as can be seen from
and one attraction point location {4} and one attraction the block flow factor values in Figs. 3, 4, and 5. In example
point entity {E}. The solution is shown in Fig 3. 3, Fig. 5 shows that the second block captures the maximum
flow with 553 and the 6th block captures the minimum flow
with 502. The minimum difference between maximum flow
and minimum flow ensures that the flow is balanced and
distributed across the whole shopping center space. The
generated examples are solved using LINGO software,
which provided solutions in reasonable time up to 52
locations. However, for larger number of locations the
software was unable to provide a solution within a 24 hours
period.
V. CONCLUSIONS
In this paper, the problem of designing a successful
shopping center and its relation to the efficient assignment
Fig. 3. Optimal layout for Example 1 of shops in its available locations is discussed. To the best
of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first proposed
The optimal solution for example 2 is shown in Fig. 4 mathematical model to address this problem. The presented
and that for example 3 is shown in Fig 5. mathematical model is proven to be successful in fulfilling
the problem objective of balancing customer circulation
around all shopping center areas, and distributing foot-
traffic across all shopping center locations. The model
utilizes the high power of attraction of some shops to attract
reasonable flow at other shops with lower power of
attraction, located at the same area, or in neighboring areas.
The presented model is tested for a number of examples,
and solved using an exact method. While solved problems
prove that model formulation results in a good distribution
of flow across the whole shopping center for small to
medium sized problems, for larger problems the exact
methods fails to provide a solution in a reasonable time.
Fig. 4. Optimal layout for Example 2
Accordingly, heuristic methods should be developed to
tackle this problem and solve large sized problems in future
studies.

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 The 9th International Conference on Informatics and Systems (INFOS2014) – 15-17 December
Operations Research and Decision Support Track

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