Supercharged by Advanced Analytics, JD.com Attains Agility, Resilience, and Shared Value Across Its Supply Chain

Grounded in advanced analytical techniques and close relationships with its partners, JD.com, the largest retailer in China based on revenue, is committed to an intelligent, integrated, and resilient supply chain that creates value for all stakeholders within the retail ecosystem. Despite challenges in the complex and sophisticated retail supply chain, JD.com has strengthened its supply chain agility, and attained shared value by focusing on supply chain efficiency, supply chain resilience, and customer-demand intelligence. Specifically, JD.com implemented an end-to-end inventory management system based on a dynamic programming model and a neural network model, leading to a reduction in costs and enhancements in operational efficiency. To be able to provide guaranteed service levels for consumers during supply chain disruptions, the company used intelligent techniques, including an emergency classification mechanism and a simulation model, to strengthen its collaboration with critical partners, attain resilience, and benefit society as a whole. For the upstream manufacturers, JD.com implemented the consumer-to-manufacturer system by incorporating state-of-the-art artificial intelligence algorithms and enabled manufacturers to accurately predict customer demand and produce more popular products according to customer preferences, hence creating value for the entire ecosystem. Billions of dollars in increased revenue and tens of millions of dollars in cost savings have been achieved to date since the implementation of the aforementioned techniques, and customer welfare and partner manufacturers’ benefits have been significantly enhanced.

Funding: This work was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China [Grant 2020AAA0103805].