Order scheduling system and methodology

• US 20030018502A1
• Filed: 05/24/2001
• Published: 01/23/2003
• Est. Priority Date: 05/24/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: RPX Corporation
• Original Assignee: VeriSign, Inc.
• Inventors: Rodriguez, John
• Granted Patent: US 7,263,495 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/7
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06315 Needs-based resource requirements planning or analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06316 Sequencing of tasks or work
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/06375 Prediction of business process outcome or impact based on a proposed change
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/08 Logistics, e.g. warehousing, loading or distribution; Inventory or stock management

Abstract

An order scheduling system providing a method for distributing product orders to multiple fulfillers is described. This method, which solves the common business problem of scheduling order shipments, is optimal because it minimizes the number of orders across fulfillers, thus minimizing shipping costs. It is also fair because orders are distributed equally across fulfillers if that fulfiller has the product available. To schedule orders, a data structure is defined whose rows are represented by a hash table of Fulfillers (HF), where each column is a hash table of Products (HP) and where each index of HP is itself a bit vector (VP_i). This gives a three-dimensional data structure. The method operates by performing bitwise ANDing (&) operations of the bit vectors, to generate an Order bit vector representing the optimized fulfillment (per system configuration/constraints) for a particular received order.

Claims

1. A method for providing improved assignment of product orders to multiple fulfillers, the method comprising:

receiving an order that requires fulfillment from one or more fulfillers, said order comprising individual order items;

ranking said set of fulfillers from most favorable to least favorable, based on specified criteria;

if all order items of the order can be fulfilled by a single fulfiller, assigning fulfillment of the entire order to the most-favorable fulfiller that can fulfill all order items;

splitting the order by assigning fulfillment of individual order items to the most-favorable fulfillers that collectively can fulfill all order items.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said criteria include minimizing shipping costs for a customer that is to receive the order.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein said criteria include minimizing shipping costs for a middleman who received the order from a customer.

4. The methods of claim 1, wherein said criteria include minimizing shipping costs by minimizing the number of fulfillers used when splitting an order.

5. The method of claim 4, wherein said minimizing shipping costs comprises minimizing the cumulative shipping distances from said multiple fulfillers.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the specified criteria include successively rotating the fulfillers in a round-robin manner to ensure fairness of selection of otherwise equally-qualified fulfillers.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

automatically generating a fulfillment request based on how fulfillment has been assigned.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein a two-dimensional in-memory data structure is employed to indicate which fulfillers can fulfill which types of products that may be ordered.

9. The method of claim 8, wherein said two-dimensional data structure comprises a hash table.

10. A method for providing improved fairness when assigning product orders to multiple fulfillers, the method comprising:

receiving an order that requires fulfillment from one or more fulfillers, said order comprising individual order items;

determining desirable attributes for fulfilling the order among a set of available fulfillers;

ranking the set of fulfillers from most favorable to least favorable, based on said desirable attributes;

if all of the order items if the order can be fulfilled by a single fulfiller, assigning the order to the most-favorable fulfiller that can fulfill all of the order items; and

if all of the order items if the order cannot be fulfilled by a single fulfiller, assigning the order to a subset comprising the most-favorable fulfillers that, collectively, can fulfill all order items of the order;

11. The method of claim 10, wherein said desirable attributes include minimizing shipping costs for a customer that is to receive the order.

12. The method of claim 10, wherein said desirable attributes include minimizing shipping costs for a middleman who received the order from a customer.

13. The methods of claim 10, wherein said desirable attributes include minimizing shipping costs by minimizing the number of fulfillers used when splitting an order.

14. The method of claim 13, wherein said minimizing shipping costs comprises minimizing the cumulative shipping distances from said multiple fulfillers.

15. The method of claim 10, wherein the desirable attributes include successively favoring different fulfillers by rotating the fulfillers in a round-robin manner, thereby ensuring fairness of selection of otherwise equally-qualified fulfillers.

16. The method of claim 10, further comprising:

automatically generating a fulfillment request based on how fulfillment has been assigned.

17. The method of claim 10, wherein a two-dimensional in-memory data structure is employed to indicate which fulfillers can fulfill which types of products that may be ordered.

18. The method of claim 18, wherein said two-dimensional data structure comprises a hash table.

19. The method of claim 18, wherein said two-dimensional data structure is extended into a three-dimensional data structure by having each entry of the hash table index, based on fulfiller/product type, into a bit vector indicating one or more order items for the order that may be fulfilled by that corresponding fulfiller shipping that corresponding product type.

20. The method of claim 10, wherein each fulfiller is a selected one of a distributor, supplier, vendor, manufacturer, or service bureau.