Inferring a location of an item within a warehouse from a taxonomy of items offered by the warehouse and locations of other items within the warehouse

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform steps comprising:

• receiving, at an online concierge system, an item catalog from an inventory system, the item catalog identifying locations within a warehouse for a set of items offered by the warehouse;
• obtaining a taxonomy at the online concierge system, the taxonomy including multiple levels, with different levels providing different levels of specificity about items offered by the warehouse included in the levels;
• receiving, at the online concierge system, an order from a customer client device associated with a user for fulfillment at the warehouse, the order including one or more items;
• for each of the one or more items,
• determining whether the item catalog includes a location of the item;
• responsive to determining that the item catalog associated with the warehouse does not have a location of the item within the warehouse, identifying one or more alternative items from the taxonomy based on shared attributes between the item and the one or more alternative items;
• selecting an identified alternative item for which the online concierge system has a location within the warehouse;
• and
• determining the location within the warehouse of the item as the location within the warehouse of the selected identified alternative item;
• determining, by the online concierge system, a picking sequence of the one or more items in the order based on the determined locations of the one or more items within the warehouse;
• and
• transmitting the determined picking sequence of the one or more items in the order to a shopper client device associated with a shopper assigned to fulfill the order, causing the determined sequence of the one or more items in the order to be displayed on the shopper client device.

A computing system, comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and
• a non-transitory computer readable storage medium having instructions encoded thereon that, when executed by the one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to perform steps comprising:
• receiving, at an online concierge system, an item catalog from an inventory system, the item catalog identifying locations within a warehouse for a set of items offered by the warehouse;
• obtaining a taxonomy at the online concierge system, the taxonomy including multiple levels, with different levels providing different levels of specificity about items offered by the warehouse included in the levels;
• receiving, at the online concierge system, an order from a customer client device associated with a user for fulfillment at the warehouse, the order including one or more items;
• for each of the one or more items,
• determining whether the item catalog includes a location of the item;
• responsive to determining that the item catalog associated with the warehouse does not have a location of the item within the warehouse, identifying one or more alternative items from the taxonomy based on shared attributes between the item and the one or more alternative items;
• selecting an identified alternative item for which the online concierge system has a location within the warehouse;
• and
• determining the location within the warehouse of the item as the location within the warehouse of the selected identified alternative item;
• determining, by the online concierge system, a picking sequence of the one or more items in the order based on the determined locations of the one or more items within the warehouse;
• and
• transmitting the determined picking sequence of the one or more items in the order to a shopper client device associated with a shopper assigned to fulfill the order, causing the determined sequence of the one or more items in the order to be displayed on the shopper client device.