building models using Gams

Poblix Inc., a well-known financing company in the retail business industry, is planning to open new chain of malls named “moondinar” in the Republic of Utopia. The chain of malls that they plan to start, typically serves the local residential communities. The company’s Research & Development team identified that a successful shopping mall should be comprehensive enough to cater all the needs of the residents. The company targets that the store will become the primary choice for food, clothing, accessories (fashion, jewelry), electronic, cinema, and toys/kids for the community. Thus, the major stores in the mall will fall into the above categories. Furthermore, the mall should have smooth mobility for the customers and balance of workload for the mall services. The mall will not only be used for the next fiscal year, but also for the future years as well. Perhaps, the mall should be flexible to withstand changes for the next 30 to 40 years without any major changes.

They are looking for Industrial Engineers (IEs) to design the manufacturing facility, and to locate the similar facilities across the republic. Your team is hired by the company as IE consultants to achieve the following two major tasks:

1. Design the layout of the shopping mall (Block and Detailed)

2. Provide the locations for the shopping mall

Relevant data and details are provided in the following pages of the document. Since the company is unaware of the methodologies that you will be using to design the facilities, you are allowed to make reasonable assumptions for the missing data. You are expected to use the standards wherever applicable. Your goal is to provide the company with the best layout and the locations for the facility.

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THE SHOPPING MALL

The company focuses on the layout of a new mall (Moondinar mall) that will be built in the college town, at the intersection of University Avenue and 20th street. The location is the prime shopping location, and serves the entire community. Poblix owns many malls in the other countries, and they plan to build the new chain of malls in the Republic of Utopia. The company has conducted an extensive data collection in their existing malls. In addition to that, the leading economic indicators, and surveys were used to identify potential list of stores/restaurants/services (from here onwards, they will be called as entity). The entities that will be launched in the mall are listed in Table-1:

Table-1: Entities and Corresponding Type

Entity*	Type		Entity	Type
Accessorize	Accessories		Peacocks	Clothing
Claire's	Accessories		Reiss	Clothing
Clarks	Accessories		River Island	Clothing
Fossil	Accessories		Simply Be	Clothing
Glamour Forever	Accessories		Apple	Electronics
Goldsmiths	Accessories		Bose	Electronics
Kiko Milano	Accessories		MenKind	Electronics
MAC	Accessories		Virgin Media	Electronics
Michael Kors	Accessories		Café Rouge	Food
Miss Diva Shoes	Accessories		Caffè Nero	Food
Monsoon	Accessories		Costa Coffee	Food
Pandora	Accessories		Gourmet Burger	Food
Shoe Zone	Accessories		Krispy Kreme	Food
Swarovski	Accessories		Muffin Break	Food
Swatch	Accessories		Nando's	Food
The Body Shop	Accessories		Nespresso	Food
The Pen Shop	Accessories		PizzaExpress	Food
The Perfume Shop	Accessories		Starbucks	Food
Vision Express	Accessories		TGI Fridays	Food
Watches of Switzerland	Accessories		Yo! Sushi	Food
L'Occitane	Accessories		Zizzi	Food
Lovisa	Accessories		Mount Fuji	Food
Radley	Accessories		Nata & Co	Food
Ernest Jones	Accessories		Prezzo	Food
Bonmarche	Clothing		Shake Shack	Food
Crew Clothing Co.	Clothing		Card Factory	Gifts
Debenhams	Clothing		Hawkins Bazaar	Kids
Fat Face	Clothing		Build a Bear	Kids
Gap	Clothing		Disney	Kids
H&M	Clothing		Game	Kids
Hollister	Clothing		Hamleys	Kids
New Look	Clothing		Kids around	Kids
Quiz Clothing	Clothing		Lego Store	Kids
Timberland	Clothing		Cineworld	Movie
Moss Bros	Clothing		Foot Locker	Shoes
Oasis	Clothing		Sports Direct	Sports

In addition to the list of entities that will be placed inside the mall facility. Auxiliary facilities like parking** and entrance/exits should also be considered. The available space to build the mall and the parking is shown in Figure-1.

*The brands are named here for educational purpose. It is not for any profitable or non-academic reasons.

** The space required for parking can be estimated based on the information in Section 1.3.

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Following is the top view of the available land that will be used to build the mall. The management would like you to consider the accessibility to the roads while building the layout. The green colored area indicates no access to road. The black colored area indicated access to road. The brown color area indicates the available space. The red and blue colored area indicates unusable space. All the distances in given in meters.

	150	120
150		80

650 mts

1000 mts

Figure-1: Available space for Moondinar

LAYOUT ANALYSIS

The focus of this section is to develop the block and detailed layout of the Moondinar mall. Following subsection highlights the necessary information. Assume any further relevant information and design the block and the detailed layouts.

1.1 MALL BLOCK ASSIGNMENTS:

The overview of various available blocks, unavailable blocks, aisle and gates is displayed in Figure-2. The aisle, unusable blocks, and gates arrangement cannot be changed. The first stage of this project is to assign blocks to different entities. The blocks are rented or purchased by each entity, based on their requirements and budget. The number of blocks per entity is assumed to be one. Based on the historical data from the entities and the company, the expected demand per day for each entity is given in the excel sheet titled DEMAND in the excel workbook named Data-xx. xlsx, where “xx” stands for your group number.

There are four segments (A, B, C, D) in the mall. All the entities must be organized such that the overall number of customers in each segment is balanced. That is, the total demand in each segment should similar to the other segments. Only block starting from A are part of segment A. Also, only the four segments (A, B, C, D) should be balanced. The block numbers starting from “F” must be assigned to food type entities. The block numbers starting from “G” should be assigned to food and kids type entities only. Preference is given to the food type entities only.

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600 mts

600 mts

Figure-2: The Internal Layout of the Moondinar Mall

1.2 DEBENHAMS BLOCK LAYOUT:

The estimated flow in number of customer units for the Debenhams are given in the excel sheet titled FLOW in the excel workbook named Data-xx. xlsx. The following table provides the information regarding the space requirements for various departments:

Table-2: Space requirements of the Debenhams entity

	Department Name	Area
		(m2)
1	Department-1	2
2	Department-2	8
3	Department-3	3
4	Department-4	4
5	Department-5	4
6	Department-6	1
7	Department-7	1
8	Department-8	5
9	Department-9	3
10	Department-10	2

	Department Name	Area
		(m2)
11	Department-11	4
12	Department-12	2
13	Department-13	3
14	Department-14	1
15	Department-15	1
16	Department-16	7
17	Department-17	4
18	Department-18	3
19	Department-19	3
20	Department-20	2

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Using the above data, construct a block layout for the Debenhams entity. The total area for Debenhams block is 80 sqmts (8 mts x 10 mts).