A hybrid approach for shelf space planning considering of stochastic demand and display facing area

Shelf space planning is an important part of retailing management and consists topics such as analysis on the dependence between demand and inventory and also determining the allocation of products to the shelves. Deterministic demand is one of the most common assumptions in these models while most of the time in the real world we are faced with uncertain demand. On the other hand display facing area is an essential variable in these problems because of different physical forms of goods and its impact on space requirements. Hence we develop the shelf space optimization models considering of stochastic demand and display facing area and then use a hybrid approach using the basic form of the bees algorithm and a heuristic algorithm to improve performance of algorithms as a solving method for this type of models. In the end, the sensitivity analysis on parameters and also pricing policies analysis is made.