Dear Colleagues,
The Seminar on Practice Problems is one of the key initiatives of the M&SOM Journal's Practice Platform. The goal of this initiative is to bring the voice of practitioners closer to the Operations Management scholar community, to inspire and facilitate new and exciting operations management research which is relevant and impactful to practice. The page describing all the seminars offered to date in this series can be found here.
Our next seminar will take place on Friday, September 8, 2023 from 10am to 11am (EDT). Please join us virtually on Zoom to hear from Flipkart on the different last-mile optimization problems in e-commerce with a focus on workforce efficiency. Click the link to view more information about the topic, speakers and how to join.
Enabling Last-mile Workforce Welfare and Productivity: Research Opportunities from the Indian E-commerce Industry
Abstract
Flipkart, one of the largest e-commerce players in India, delivers more than 3.5m packages per day. From a provider's perspective, the cost of delivery including the number of attempts to make a successful delivery is an important component of business profitability; however, the welfare of the delivery workforce cannot be ignored in the network decision-making. The delivery workforce "wishmasters"-who make the last-mile connection with the consumers play a crucial role in enhancing the doorstep experience through timely deliveries, collecting payments, and also managing returns. With rising opportunities for gig economy workers, absenteeism and attrition are increasingly common phenomena in platform businesses. Hence, there is a need to ensure that all wishmasters are provided with equal opportunities to earn their wages by maximizing the number of shipments they deliver. In this seminar, we highlight three last-mile optimization problems around last-mile hub location, last-mile capacity estimation with uncertain delivery locations, and equitable allocation of shipments among the wishmasters. Solving these problems can not only improve the overall efficiency in the last mile but also benefit the wishmasters through higher daily earning potential.
Presenters: Chandrasekhar K (Flipkart), Shailendra Kumar (Flipkart), and Debjit Roy (Indian Institute of Ahmedabad). Detailed biographies are on the webpage.
Zoom Link: Click Here
We will post the seminar recording through the INFORMS YouTube Channel, so colleagues will be able to view it later at their convenience if they cannot make it live. Furthermore, the journal will allow for up to a month any comments or questions related to the seminar from the audience (live or not). These will be posted and then monitored by the Practice Platform department editors.
For any questions, please feel free to contact any of us.
Best regards,
The OM Practice Platform Editors:
Pavithra Harsha <pharsha@us.ibm.com>, Jérémie Gallien <jgallien@london.edu>, Ananth Raman <araman@hbs.edu>,
and the M&SOM Journal EIC Georgia Perakis <georgiap@mit.edu>
------------------------------
Pavithra Harsha
Principal Research Scientist
IBM Research
Yorktown Heights NY
------------------------------