Order fulfillment
AssigneeNIKE, Inc.
InventorsVivek Farias, Aryan Iden Khojandi, Ritesh Madan, Chad Yan, Guang Yang
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems and methods for the automated fulfillment of orders from a fulfillment network including consumer-facing retail locations. Orders are partitioned into suborders, which are in turn assigned to retail locations based on forecasted demand for the suborder items at the retail locations. The assignment process considers operational data for each retail location such as the number of employees, the inventory of suborder items, shipping rate cards, return policies, business hours, pick decline estimations, etc.
Claims20
A system for fulfilling orders from a fulfillment network comprising a plurality of consumer-facing retail locations, the system comprising:
- processing circuitry;
- and
- a memory storing instructions which, when executed by the processing circuitry, cause the processing circuitry to:
- retrieve, from a data source, operational data concerning a plurality of retail locations in the fulfillment network;
- receive an order comprising one or more items for delivery to an address;
- forecast the demand for the at least one item from among the one or more items at a plurality of retail locations in the fulfillment network;
- select a retail location in the fulfillment network for fulfilling the at least one item from the order based at least in part on the operational data and the forecasted demand;
- and
- transmit an electronic representation of the at least one item from the order to the selected retail location for fulfillment,
- wherein the operational data comprises each and every one of the number of employees at the retail location, the shipping rate card of the retail location, the return policies of the retail location, the business hours of the retail location, and pick decline estimation for the retail location.
A non-transitory machine-readable medium for fulfilling orders from a fulfillment network comprising a plurality of consumer-facing retail locations, the machine-readable medium storing instructions which, when executed by processing circuitry of one or more computing machines, cause the processing circuitry to:
- retrieve, from a data source, operational data concerning a plurality of retail locations in the fulfillment network;
- receive an order comprising one or more items for delivery to an address;
- forecast the demand for the at least one item from among the one or more items at a plurality of retail locations in the fulfillment network;
- select a retail location in the fulfillment network for fulfilling the at least one item from the order based at least in part on the operational data and the forecasted demand;
- and
- transmit an electronic representation of the at least one item from the order to the selected retail location for fulfillment,
- wherein the operational data comprises each and every one of the number of employees at the retail location, the shipping rate card of the retail location, the return policies of the retail location, the business hours of the retail location, and pick decline estimation for the retail location.
A computer-implemented method for fulfilling orders from a fulfillment network comprising a plurality of consumer-facing retail locations, the method comprising:
- retrieving, at a computer and from a data source, operational data concerning a plurality of retail locations in the fulfillment network;
- receiving, at the computer, an order comprising one or more items for delivery to an address;
- forecasting, at the computer, the demand for the at least one item from among the one or more items at a plurality of retail locations in the fulfillment network;
- selecting, at the computer, a retail location in the fulfillment network for fulfilling the at least one item from the order based at least in part on the operational data and the forecasted demand;
- and
- transmitting, from the computer, an electronic representation of the at least one item from the order to the selected retail location for fulfillment,
- wherein the operational data comprises each and every one of the number of employees at the retail location, the shipping rate card of the retail location, the return policies of the retail location, the business hours of the retail location, and pick decline estimation for the retail location.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.